No Code: Lelouch of the Geass
by Tridentwatch
Summary: Lelouch doesn't get the Geass. He relies on brilliance and cunning to defeat Britannia. Kallen/Lelouch/Shirley triangle.
1. Chapter 1: Lelouch's Terrorists

Chapter One

Lelouch Lamperouge, master of the art of strategy, stared across the wooden table toward the chess master's frozen and haunted expression. He watched the old man's facial ticks with amusement and some degree of cruelty. I have him now, he thought, grinning inside victoriously as he imagined the money that he would win from this match, and the humiliation. It was so overwhelmingly pleasing that Lelouch had to force himself to keep a mad chuckle emerging into the silence of the room.

The old man looked up suddenly, a defeated gleam in his eye that told Lelouch everything. "You have won, I think," he said softly, "I have been beaten by a twenty year old, a man a quarter of my age. Can you believe, Mr. Lamperouge, that I have been studying chess for over sixty five years?" The old man was weary. He struck a cigar and puffed, and drank the last of his brandy in one gulp.

"You play well," Lelouch said, "But I saw through your strategy quickly. You give yourself away with the overall movements of your knights and place too much emphasis on your queen." Lelouch took the offered cigar with a small nod and had the maid light it for him as he waited patiently for his opponent to take in his message.

He nodded, understandingly, "That is correct, you are correct. Okay then, what were the terms of our bet? I will pay you thirty thousand European dollars now, and thirty thousand later, will that suffice?" 

Lelouch thought for a moment as he dragged on the cigar, the taste of apples and cinnamon filling his breath. Nunally is not going to be happy at the stink on me, he thought.

"In cash," Lelouch said, "And I want it now, all of it."

The old man smirked suddenly, his eyes flashing with barely restrained rage, "You think you can order me around in my own home? You may have won this game, but do not think you will get your money by being rude."

Lelouch's eyes narrowed as he looked around in caution, his photographic memory taking in the room and everything within, its patterns and arrangements, escape routes and hidden caches. Everything in a single glance. The old man had three body guards in black suits and dark sunglasses, and one of them had a gun strapped to his waist, a shiny and hard looking gun that Lelouch knew would blast a hole in his chest. And the guard looked dumb enough to use it. He would not escape this situation through brawns but when had he ever relied on physical strength. He thought about what he knew of his opponent and thought about the main reason he had come. Yes, everything was going according to plan, albeit with a bit of rearrangement and correction here and there. The body guards were glaring at him. Lelouch could see he would not get his money right away and then quickly thought of a way he could, strategy upon brilliant strategy presenting itself effortlessly, like the unveiling of a rose, the scent that Nunally liked the best.

"I do not need money, exactly. You have something of far greater value," Lelouch began in what he thought was an arrogant and noble tone. This was the actual reason he had come here and if he was enjoying the thrill of it, he did not show it. "Your nephew, Lloyd, is one of the greatest scientists in the world, I am sure you are aware and proud of him for that."

The old man nodded with a guarded expression, his eyes a miasma of human hate and pride stung pain, "Yes, that is true, so what of it though? Is there anything he can create for you that would please you more than the fortune you shall receive from me?" He began to grin at that, as if sharing an inner joke with only himself. Lelouch could see through it like glass, and would break it just as easily.

Lelouch nodded, smiling gently and looking serene, "His mind is brilliant and he has been known for his eccentric projects. One of which is his study of ESP powers, specifically a project known as 'Code Geass.' I want details of this project. I know you have contacts, you have the power to get me this information." Lelouch stared down his opponent with cold eyes, and he knew he had won before the game truly began.

"Code Geass," The old man muttered to himself. "I have never heard of it." He took another drag of his cigar, blew it in Lelouch's face, and then put it out on the chess board. The wood singed underneath the flame before being put out.

"I hadn't either, until two days ago," Lelouch explained, "When I met Jeremiah Gotwald, leader of the Purist Group. He was most forthcoming about details under the heavy sleep of hypnotics and liquor." Lelouch need not have told him that, but he did so to show that he was not helpless and would not be intimidated. He knew if he showed weakness it could go badly for him. That was the Britannian way, strength, no weakness.

"You drugged him," The old man said flatly as if in disbelief, but Lelouch could not read his eyes, "You drugged one of the most powerful people in the empire."

Lelouch shrugged, and turned his gaze toward the old man's bodyguards. He glanced toward the door, the message was clear. If the old man wished to know more about Code Geass, about Lloyd's new project and how it would get him out of a sixty thousand dollar debt with some commoner named Lelouch Lamperouge, then so be it, he would have to dance to Lelouch's tune. The old man looked at his bodyguards consideringly and gestured for them to leave.

They sat in the room for a long time, planning. Lelouch spoke and told all he knew, or almost all of it. The project certainly sounded intriguing, being as it was about the unexplored, the alien, and yet Lelouch and his opponent were born skeptics, and each knew there was nothing without proof. Proof talks and bullshit walks, that was the key message in the scientific community and Lelouch had learned his lessons well. He showed the old man proof, records on a floppy disk that needed one of those old computers of the last century to use. They were allies for now, but neither trusted the other.

Mr. Archebello gave him his money and told him to have a nice day. Lelouch looked at it and shook his head, asked for more.

Lelouch looked into the old man's somber eyes and repeated his plan with all the integrity and confidence he could muster. His charisma shined in his words. "I think that if you follow me, you will find what you are seeking," He murmured looking out the window at the rain. "Don't think I know not about your true ambition."

"Oh?" The old man said, and then he shook his head back and let out a roaring laugh. But Lelouch noted the man's shoulders were tight with strain and stress. He wanted to smile but held himself back, because he was almost there, close to victory. Now was the pivotal moment, the breaking point in winning this man's loyalty.

"You want your nephew to follow your footsteps as a chess master, instead of a scientist. I can convince him to do so," Lelouch said, "Because I know how to win and influence people."

"I can see that," The old man said, "And yes, I hate science, I hate it with the bottom of my heart's most energetic disgust because it has taken something away from me. Indeed it has taken something away from society, its grace, its innate beauty gone in the world of blinking digits and technology." He sneered. "So overrated, so useless in the end. Chess on the other hand is an art form, a way of sharpening the mind and bringing cold fury to discipline your heart, master your emotions. If one wins the inner game of chess with oneself…"

"Then he wins the world," Lelouch said softly. "My father used to repeat it to me often."

"Well he ought to, seeing as it is one of the favorite phrases of the emperor himself," The old man said. "If you can convince my nephew to resign his evil ways of sience, his unglorious and cowardly tinkering with the knowledge of the forbidden fruit, then I will see what I can do to get you the information about this project you are so interested in."

"The Code Geass Project," Lelouch said, "Yes, thank you Mr. Archebello. You have been of immense help to me, and I will no doubt convince Lloyd to venture upon new paths, paths not trodden by scientists except for those eccentric individuals who possess the touch of the power of gods, the genius of kings."

"What do you mean?" Mr. Archebello said, slightly suspiciously. "The deal we have is that you will have Lloyd take up chess and give science to those who are lesser then us."

Lelouch shook his head, "Chess is something one must find for himself, and if Lloyd eventually comes across it, if the game lights his inner fire then perhaps something can be done about him following in your footsteps."

Lelouch stood up, and the rain seemed to pound ever the harder outside. "I need to get going now. Do you agree to the terms? I will get Lloyd to give up science eventually, but I need results from you."

Mr. Archebello stood up as well and looked into Lelouch's eyes, silent as a rock. Then he finally nodded and they clasped hands.

Mr. Archebello paid him half the money in European dollars. It was a fortune as a sakuradite mine had been discovered in Eastern Germany deep underground that had sky rocketed the entire EU's economy.

Lelouch did not have an umbrella. He cursed his lack of foresight, even as his mind went over the previous week's weather patterns, sunny and bright and now sudden rain. He was not one to take stock in bizarre situations as something superstitious, but even he had his limits. Sudden weather patterns corresponds to sharp changes in the Earth's magnetic fields, he reminded himself, which is part of what is the driving force for the research into Code Geass. So perhaps this weather pattern anamoly is related as well?

He touched the wrist watch Nunally had given him as a graduation present, a flash of gold gleamed in the darkness of the rainy evening. He glared at a passing cat and wondered what it would taste like. He was going insane.

No, he laughed aloud as he pondered his dilemma. He was taking this project too seriously. Relaxing his features he strolled out the parking lot of the mansion of Mr. Archebello and walked swiftly down the street, looking for a taxi cab that could take him back to the hotel. He wanted to see Nunnally bright and happy tonight before she turned in, and he never could wake her, disturb her peaceful sleeping expression. Perhaps he was a bit of a sucker, a bit of a romantic, a bit soft and emotional rather than hard and cold, but he had his edges and he had his softness and there was nothing wrong with that.

He caught a cab and sat in the seat, smelling the faint stench of cigarette smoke that lingered in the cab. He wanted to smoke one right now but he had given up the habit two months ago. He was feeling healthier because of it, but right now at times like these when he had gotten his money and gotten a contact with Mr. Archebello, he still felt like he lost something. Maybe I'm losing my humanity. He certainly knew drugging Jeremiah was not right, and was very risky. Nonetheless he succeeded and he got information, which he used. As expected of the progidial son, but never as good as Schniezel. That was harsh but true. He had never won – the furthest he had gotten with the second prince when they played chess was a draw.

He sighed as he looked out at the weather, which seemed to match his mood exactly. What happened to me, he wondered, I wanted to destroy Britannia and I am no closer to my goal than when I first declared it.

The cab driver was an Eleven, and he looked tired at this time of night. Still he did not try to make conversation, perhaps he was too intimidated, Lelouch thought.

At the hotel, he met the owner who was sitting at the counter and reading the latest newspaper. He had a portly body and a red face, a moustache that was far too large and eyebrows much too dark and hairy. His eyes were little brown beads fully focused on the newspaper. The headlines read, "Britannia Conquers Another Area – Area 18" and that pierced Lelouch's mind with the sharpest pain – the taste of failure lingered in Lelouch's mouth.

"Lelouch," Nunally said when he went up to their room. She looked relaxed, but there was a certain tension around her eyes that he recognized for stress. Was I worrying you, he wondered, but did not say aloud.

"You came on time," She said with a slight laugh and wheeled her wheel chair toward the door where her face morphed in a gentle smile. My sister, Lelouch said in his mind, I carve out a world for you that you shall prosper and live happily, at peace.

"Yes, the chess game went as planned," Lelouch said, "I won of course, and Mr. Archebello was kind enough to give me half of the winnings that I should have received."

"Oh," Nunally said with a frown, "Well at least you got something, right brother?"

Lelouch nodded and clasped Nunally's hands with his own in a very gentle and soothing manner. "Nunally, we got thirty thousand dollars," He said. Nunally's face lit up with happiness.

"Oh my, that's a fortune," She exclaimed, laughing happily. "Come on then, lets celebrate with a movie and a dinner, is take out okay?"

They ordered Japanese food and spent the next few hours in happiness. It was not to last.

00000000 

If there was one word to describe too satisfaction, it was a cup of coffee. Lelouch sipped it gingerly as he looked at the pure white screen of the computer visualizing what he would do with the money. He obviously wanted to buy a better wheelchair model for Nunally but she did not want one - she told him last night:

"You already bought me a new model three months ago, Lelouch," She said, her hand on Lelouch's shoulder, "Maybe you should spend it on your biomedical magnetic field project."

He had laughed then, thinking he would not need any money and would stand out simply for brilliance. He was currently doing his PhD degree and he knew that he needed some funds for his research into the effect of magnetic fields on a human's immune system and in particular the effect of cartegonic antioxidant production by T-cells in the body's bone marrow which would theoretically help reverse psychosomatic illnesses such as the one Nunally had. Lelouch did not tell her he was doing his research for his sister's sake, he was sure she would not be happy. Such a sweet girl, he thought fondly as he drank another bitter gulp of his coffee. He clicked on a link that took him to another website with the newest wheelchair models - these ones invented interestingly by Lloyd Aspund himself, the earl of pudding as he was fondly called.

He looked at in benign interest at the latest model: this one was activated with voice control and heavily influenced by the latest knightmare edition models that Lloyd was working on. So this was his side project hmm? He clicked on the price link and saw it was ready to go on auction, mostly going to be bought by rich Britannians for its ingenuity. Hmph, he thought as he calculated how much funds he had in his bank account. In total it was over a hundred and fifty thousand european dollars, but he wanted to save at least seventy percent of that for Nunally, just in case something happened to him.

"Hey Lelouch," Nunally said, rolling her wheel chair behind Lelouch where he was sitting, sipping his bitter coffee. He turned and looked at Nunally, her hair wet after taking a long shower. She was always independent in nature despite her handicaps. "I think we should invite Shirley to dinner and celebrate your recent winnings, what do you think?"

So she was still trying to get him to go out with Shirley, that was annoying. He tried not to sigh, but perhaps Nunally saw through that, because despite her blindness she could be quite perceptive. "Very well then," She said somewhat coldly.

"No wait," Lelouch exclaimed, "I think... yes its just that today I wanted to work on my research and I was hoping for a day to study a textbook I recently purchased. Perhaps tomorrow?"

"Yes, that will be great," Nunally said, her face immediately brightening. "I will leave you to it then. I'm going to head out to the Academy then. As an assistant teacher I get to teach students and help them, and today I'm going to be leading the class since Mrs. Omorna is away. Can you believe she went in labour just three days ago?" Nunally was gushing. Lelouch smiled.

Independent. That was the word to describe Nunally, strong and gentle at the same time. She could take care of herself but Lelouch wanted to do that for her. He loved her after all. "Yes, go ahead, then Nunally, have fun," Lelouch said. "Should I call a cab for you or do you want to take the hotel's limo?"

"I think I will take the limosuine today in light of your winnings," Nunally said with a mischevious grin, "Hope you don't mind."

Lelouch did mind, that would cost him at least three hundred dollars, but he did not want Nunally to have a want in the world. Instead, with a gentle push at the wheelchair's handles, he wheeled her out the door and toward the elevator. He talked about his research, secretely enjoying the one sided conversation. Nunally was a good listener.

He said in scientific jargon - perhaps Nunally did not understand fully but she was happy to hear Lelouch's voice: "The magnetic fields coming from the North and South Pole, Nunally, is what is the basis of my research. To think that those energy waves can offer such beneficial properties to the human body when harnessed in a concentrated manner... it is going to be one of the most brilliant theses of the century I think, but I will of course have to publish anonymously. We would not want the ones who are in control to get wind of our location - and our presence." He was talking about his father, the emperor of Britannia.

"Of course," Nunally said with a frown, "But still you should get credit for your work."

"I will get credit where it matters," Lelouch said gently, "By proving my thesis it will attract the best minds to me, and I will have job offers around the world despite the pseuodonym that I will use. In fact they will be even more attracted to the intelligence of a commoner, thinking they can steal and take credit for things that do not belong to them." He sighed. "Such practices are all too rampant these days. But the basis of my research fundamentally lies in how these fields can be harnessed, in fact if I don't build something capable of using these magnetic fields and directing it into the human body in a way to make a person's immunity heighten to new sensitivities then my whole work for these past six months will be a failure."

"You don't need to succeed to have my love, Lelouch," Nunally said, "After all, you got your master's degree at the age of nineteen."

"Yes, and that in itself poses a problem. People will expect brilliant things of me, but if I don't publish under a false name, I will put you and I in great danger."

"I think you should do it, Lelouch," Nunally said, holding her brother's hand. "Be brave!"

"Very well then," Lelouch said, "I will take credit where credit is due... if I am successful." After all how could he deny Nunally's wishes? That was his one weakness. And he cherished it.

The elevator ride down was uneventful as Lelouch talked more about the immunity response of T-cells and how it would affect the mind, how one can theoretically create a whole new breed of super humans, ones that were genetically altered by the carcinogenic effects of the concentrated magnetic energy - except in a positive way instead of something like smoking.

Lelouch watched her leave in a black limosuine and then simply looked at the harsh sunlight that glared off the pearl coloured sky scraper buildings of New Japan City - where they lived. This was home, his home now, because Nunally made it her home. Yet he remembered his vow. With Britannia's increasing victories, they would not be able to escape detection for long. Royal family was highly prized and many nobles would seek to manipulate them, get them in their clutches.

He could only hope that publishing such a brilliant work - and he had no doubts, such was his arrogance - that he would somehow remain in the shadows, posing as a mere commoner. Somehow he doubted it, and yet he also felt a strange pleasure. This was his life's work, short as it was. He was a prodigy, on the scale of Nina, a classmate of his. She was devoted to her scientific physics and mathematical engineering and he... he took a different pursuit.

Chess and medicine. He needed chess for money, and he needed biomedical skills for Nunally. He wanted her to live happy, healthy, prosperous. He would do everything in his power. Yet his secret goal, one he did for himself as much for Nunally, if not more for selfish reasons remained unfulfilled.

So he remained empty and miserable on the inside, and he hated hiding his true nature from Nunally.

But his weakness was also his strength and so he shrugged off the laziness that had seeped into his bones, and went back to sipping coffee, this time reading a textbook as thick as the wheels on Nunally's chair.

He would finish it within eight hours, fully understood and memorized. And the rest of the time he would look out the window, day dream, think about Nunally, plan his revenge on Britannia.

He would wait, he could wait. His time would come some day, he was sure of it.

Now if only he could think of a way to actually build such a machine as this -- the only thing his project came remotely close to was Code Geass which also used magnetic fields... except these originated from a different source. Lelouch suspected it was the moon, or something in the cosmos, something alien and mysterious, cold and inhuman. He felt an insatiable need - a hunger for knowledge about Code Geass.

And he would have it. He told himself this was for Nunally. But deep inside he knew he wanted power for himself.

**African Repblican Democracy of European Rule (ARDER) Has Formed Alliance With China **

**News Article dated Nov 12/2025 a.t.b**

**By: Yeuanna Chandra **

Yesterday after Britannia had conquered its newest Area and added it to their collection of villainous and amoral deeds, a rising cry of challenge rose outward from Prince Schniezel vi Britannia's greatest enemy. "You shall not dictate mankind, Britainnia!"

Indeed, General Taubbyus De Vulrainagtaze who is well known for being directly blood related to France's greatest emperor and no doubt much more formidable than modern Britannia's best, Napolean Bonapart De Francium Emperierum, roared the lion's cry of challenge and who shall be king of the jungle depends only on the factors that govern humanity, nature at its most primordial.

Like the Emperor of Britannia says, Only the Strong Can Rule Over the Strong – his title for his latest speech at the capital regarding the formation of ARDER.

ARDER is a grievous threat to Britannia, as well as the EU for although the name says they are subservient to the EU, actually factual evidence reveals they in fact have split up with the EU and are working on their own. Indeed, with Germany's Sakruadite Source creating enormous income potentials has alienated most of the allies of the EU, who are no doubt jealous and envious of the EU's recent success which rivals that of Britannia's greatest triumphs. Such a sakuradite source as discovered in Germany is at least twenty times bigger and purer than what was originally thought to be the richest mines location: Area 11 (former identity: Japan).

While ARDER may not be able to compete with Britannia and EU's military forces, nor with EU and Britannia's income potential, the one from the "AREAS" and the other from its Sakuradite mining facility, it seems almost paltry in comparison.

However the ARDER Association of Grouped together AFRICAN (those who lie in the southern hemisphere opposite North America as well as the one connected distantly to Europe) countries have recently developed a new threat – a weapon of massive destruction that far outweighs the militaristic capabilities of Knightmares.

The scientists call it the nuclear bomb and it is perhaps the most massive destructive weapon ever to be created, capable of destroying countries in seconds. More on this later.

Lelouch walked quickly down the grimy street, fully aware of how dangerous it was to be in these parts of Area 11 He could be attacked, he kenw, but he felt well prepared for that evantuallity with a gunholster on his waist, and a 6B electric magnum oscillating kabholm in it. These babies could take down a Sutherland with a single shot so the gun would definitely prove effective for big targets. He could intimidate any of his opponents.

Lelouch took out a pack of cigarretes from his vest and stopped under a street lamp. He looked at the pack, at the white rolling paper and the tobacco, knowing of its unique properties on the body and the brian. Cancer was a predominant danger of using such vices, and up till now still no cure had been found. Still, Lelouch felt he needed it. Lately he was feeling a bit depressed, loss of interest in the normal activities of life. He supposed it was because he failed to reach his goals of destroying Britannia. He pulled one out and smoked it.

The smoke filled his head with a joyful bubbling sensation, nicotine calming his nerves and focusing his mind, pinpoint concentration totally absorbed in new knightmare model bioengineering. Nunally's wheelchair filled his vision, improvements to be had focusing and sustaining his enthusiasm for the goal, the Goal with a capital G. Goals are fucking important, Lelouch thought, rage and euphoria. Wow, cigarette so effectively inactivating him and lulling him into false oceans of joy, he didn't like it. Please let this end, he begged, gasping for air. An asthma attack had thirty percent probability. Lelouch calculated, full genius a work of play: innumerable possibilities in his mind.

He went to call a cab and sat in it for a while, wheels rolling on broken pavement of Ghetto Japan, poor stock screaming and begging for help, worst of the lot, abused under Britannia – victims made Lelouch nauseas, filled his stomach with rage and made him clench his briefcase tightly. It was filled with lots of money, in pure fresh notes, green fresh cash ready to make purchases – perfect for terrorists.

Was he having a panic attack? No, couldn't be. Taxi driver's voice filtered through over radio playing a slow symphony, Mozart or Bethooveen? Lelouch couldn't remember. His head hurt. "Hey buddy, you can't smoke here, dig it?"

"Sorry," Lelouch muttered, tossed the but of the cig out the window. Hit a passerby car, honking filled the street light. "Drive faster."

"Yessir, boss, better have the cash to pay me though or else I'll call the cops."

Great, just his luck to get the one wack job taxi driver. He wanted out, wanted to puke but knew he couldn't. Important meetings were going to be underway, determing future plans, his next course of life, an attack against Britannia. Taking the offensive he had to stay stubborn, he could do it. Fuck the helplessness, just get out! He told the driver to stop at the parking lot on East Hastings Blvrd, 31B station unit.

Paid the driver three times the fee in cash, and ran into the parking lot. Tires squealed against the road. Taxi Car raced away and Lelouch was left alone in the garage where noises of his footsteps echoed in the chamber.

"Hello," Lelouch said, "I'm here, come and face me before I leave."

Nothing, he got scared. They might jump me and kill me, take my money and scram. Thoughts of murder filled his vision. He couldn't do this! Dealing with terrorists, he might die…

"Hey you, are you the contact?" A gruff voice echoed. A man stepped behind a black jeep, wearing a gold chain over a thin blue striped shirt. He was Japanese. Lelouch nodded, and said in a deeply confident faked voice, "I am not just the contact, but your funder too," Lelouch said, his eyes glowing in the darkness a brilliant violet opaque. It looked like a thousand crystals, pinpoint eyes of a jellyfish thousand multitudes in a sea of stars. He felt drugged, his reflection underneath the white lighting of a parking light dull and flat on a puddle. He looked at his black coat, neat and pressed and then at the other man's coat which was muddy and looked threadbare. "You who are without funds, I have the money. You may use it to buy Southerlands and take your new force, attack the dark alleyways of Eleven Brtannia conqueror capitol cities. Attack those who are rich and glorifying on your suffering. You exist to make chaos."

"What the hell are you going on about?" asked the rebel, his face scarred with wounds, battle hardened spirit on a stiff neck. Lelouch drew upon his pain and suffering, rejection of Britannia infusing his gut with hatred and strong emotion, pouring out of him in a wave of confidence and utter surety. "You will tell me what you will do with this if I were to give it to you," Lelouch said, and threw down the brief case.

The lid tattered open, revealing the huge pile of money. The rebel's eyes grew as large as saucers, "Holy mother –" He stilled, and then bent and gingerly picked a single note from the case, held it to the light. "It's real," he said in awe, looked at Lelouch, "Who are you?"

"I have given you all the information you need, I am your funder, your most valued supporter. I need your help, need your group's aid in carrying out several operations that will ultimately hurt Britannia."

The rebel's mouth curled in an amused smirk. Eyes glittered with amusement… and something else, curiosity perhaps, or just wonder.

Lelouch sketched out a brief plan with the rebel, who swore he would take it to his superiors. Lelouch placed a marking chip on one of the bills – microscopic and undectable the night before.

He smelled like smoke and sweat, a bottle of bourbon stinking on the table smell full of alcohol. He looked at the laptop, sitting in the van, staring into the endless white screen detailing movements of the rebels, as well as tapped conversations. Fifteen thousand European dollars, spent just to find a small rebel group.

He had introduced himself to the rebel in the garage, one Biscurey, a big half Japanese, half Indian man wrestler in the bars but undercover Knightmare pilot, launching attacks. He had agreed to meet with Lelouch on a whim, mostly ready for a trap, ready to spring it right back onto the trappers – Britannians he assumed, or go out like a sacrificial lamb, so the group could survive.

The deal was genuine. Lelouch lost a fortune, half the money gained in chess, and in return got respect, got information, this was key to his long term plans. He drank the rest of the bourbon that was still in the glass, feeling warm liquid erupt in his chest like boiling fire. He coughed, and lit another cigarette, took in a deep drag and looked at the ash accumulating at the end of a red dot of heat. "Fuck yeah," he said, smiling to himself as he realized he had achieved significant gain today – he would do it, could do it.

Destroy Britannia. It was his goal.

Nunally would realize one day that her brother had done miracles in her name. Realize it while living in the peace and beauty of a new world, carved out by Lelouch – his strength and genius, coexisting in a nexus of plans, spider webs of pulled strings. He was orchestrating a revolution, organized, deadly, and ultimately selfish.

But he would win. Or he would not deserve to keep his vow and he would accept with failure the exile that obscurity would bring. Such were his thoughts as he drove back to the hotel in the borrowed van. He knew the rebels intimately, their base of operations, members, what they would do with the money (buy launcher rockets, the twits, instead of good Sutherlands) as well as how to go about gaining their trust and control.

Nunally was a little saddened when she came home after a hard day's work of teaching only to find Lelouch absent. He had left an audio message looped repeatedly blaring its recording in Lelouch's voice to the empty hotel room. Nunally paused on the entrance, hands on wheels, and listened to the message carefully:

"Nunally, I am going to visit a friend of mine who has recently discovered something of interest. He is staying only for a short while in Japan and I took the earliest plane to meet him in Teinchujiki."

That was a five hour flight, Nunally knew, and she hated that Lelouch would be gone for so long. At least a day or two. Whenenver she was alone she always felt scared and uncomfortable, those feelings of battle, of gunshots powpowpow and bodies falling on the stair case, blood gore and explosive flesh littering the hallway in a pool of blood. Expressions on dead faces, sadness and absolute misery marking its gashes and cuts on Nunally's soul. She could remember the scene with absolute clarity, the fright, the murderer. But whenever she tried to talk about it to Lelouch – who else really? – she felt she could not, and so she did not.

She sighed and got some orange juice from the fridge, half cold. Poured it into a tall cup and gulped it down, stared blankly at where the radio should be and said, "On!" in a clear voice. The radio started immediately, voice controlled and activated, and began reading the sports headlines.

She settled down for a lonely, frightening night with only stark memories to keep her company.

There was nobody in the house, Lelouch liked that. An empty house had no ghosts and the memories of his father – the past and its unhealed anger – slowly gave way to a melancholic numbness and surety as he went through his day like a robot, mechanical and empty, bereft of ideas, creatively dulled: burned out.

Lelouch picked up the phone and dialed his friend, living in Britannia, he had known Robert Grechen for three years and was somewhat interested in the man's research into nuclear genetics. "Hello, speaking to Robert?" Lelouch said briefly, mentally counting down from five, the sun's position out the window said it was ten past two and Lelouch knew Britannia's time was three hours past Area Eleven so that meant Robert would be in his lab – he was always in his lab and rarely came out – doing tests and running experiments on poor unsuspecting white rats. Lelouch knew Nunally would feel sorry for the rats, but Lelouch didn't, not when he had first seen Robert's laboratory, then he had felt only a brief anticipation about the coming events, about injecting nuclear dna treated with radiosomes, a new breed of medicine to treat AIDs, that he tingled all over and did not feel any hint of remorse for their fates. "You have a good eye for this kind of subject," Robert said with a laugh, watching him carefully from the door of the lab. Lelouch had turned, given him a smile and they understood each other with that one look and from henceforth were the best of friends.

"Robert, I need you help with a brief project of mine," Lelouch said, holding the phone a few centimeters from his ear. Robert really liked to shout, was in the habit of doing this especially since back home he had banned all maids from entering his lab, so whenever he wanted some coffee or a cupcake or a cookie – he really liked junk foods, while Lelouch preferred fruits – he would yell for the maid and wait for her by the door, never actually bothering to leave. "I have here several models made by Lloyd, and I wanted to get the science behind one of the latest ones that has caught my eye. This one uses DNA recognitition software to program the wheelchair to obey neurological commands by radiowaves, is that right?"

"Err, Lelouch, how've you been old buddy?" Robert exclaimed from the speaker, "I was just about to dial your number actually and ask you about a question right up your alley about magnetic fields and its implications on life span for the standard eukaryotic bacterium. Trade for trade then?"

Lelouch hung up after fifteen minutes of conversation, and wrote down a note on a yellow pad, ripped the page out, looked at it for an entire minute before crumpling it in disgust. He opened his laptop and went to the home page, typed in "RECEPTION SOFTWARE INC" and got the maps for the terrorist headquarters thanks to the GPS system he implanted in one of the bills. They still hadn't used the money – or the bill that Lelouch had put the bugs on, and in a way Lelouch felt glad but he was also a bit anxious – would the terrorists take the bait? He had recorded everything – all the conversation and audio noises – and started up the sound playback for the past ten minutes. He sat back, listened for a bit about random chatter – apparently Tamaki was interested in the dating profile of resistence members, and Andro seemed eager to find out what "B-Viagra" did for the male physiology. She blushed when Kallen told her, Lelouch could hear it in her voice. Wait! His mind stopped for a brief moment before churning into sixth gear and speeding down the highway of memories. Kallen Stadfield, aka Kallen Kouzaku apparently, he thought, now a resistence fighter, or were you one all along? He was giddy with excitement, thinking of how lucky he was to finally get an in, an opening with the resistence group and so easily too. Now he knew a resistance member in real life, intimately one might say in that he or she would be far easier to manipulate. But Kallen would see this coming, because she would know it was Lelouch who funded the financial bizz side of the resistance and would draw their suspicions on the fact that he was Britannian and thus not to be trusted, Kallen might repeat tales of popular rumours about Lelouch which would blow away his reputation. He could feel his image draining away but he still smirked in triumph.

He got up and decided it was time to put the enemy king in Check.

His mask had been created, his mind was razor sharp. He started up the laptop and went over his plan one more time. In his mind he knew the plan inside and out and had created it in less than twenty minutes based on information begotten secretely by a turncoat to Britannia, Robert, his friend the scientist. The information was slim but had relations upon a secret project of toxic gas – supposedly its cover, but in reality it hid a far ulgier and much more curious truth, a Code. Not a "CODE GEASS", just a "CODE" – that was the name of an encrypted document within the emperor's own mail box! How Robert had gotten that, Lelouch did not know, but he trusted Robert, so he did not ask questions, thanked Robert, but at the same time covered all his bases and investigated the information by himself.

As a detective, Lelouch's skills were perhaps mediocre, but as a strategist he was above excellence. He knew delegation, how it worked, just how easy it made life. Teamwork: he could not take on Britannia alone; the past proved that, Lelouch put on his mask and his new outfit to say to the world, Here Lies Your Hero, Your Savior. No, Lelouch exclaimed in his mind, here lays Zero, a man of nothing, no being, no person, simply a vessel for justice to act. "Zero," Lelouch whispered as he looked in the mirror. It was perfect.

Lelouch walked down the train corridor, knowing there were people gazing at him in confusion and some amusement. Clowning around had never been Lelouch's passion. He hated it but knew it was necessary for his plan, the "PLAN" in capital bolded italicized letters, for the PLAN underlined everything that Lelouch had to do in order to take down Britannia, and how quickly. Now was the time to act on three hundred thousand possibilities in total – he had strategized his whole world, his entire future, and he held it in his lap and gazed into it, he found it wanting.

People whispered, they laughed at his outfit, smirked at his ridiculousness but Lelouch, face red with embarrassement knew just how necessary his actions were today. He was thirty miles away from Nunally's location, in the suburbs of Britannian Japan – Honourable Britannians, Elevens who were obedient. They got their bones, just like dogs, they sat and rolled at the master's command. Lelouch knew he would have to eradicate this behavior, make it for him or against him. He was Zero, and he would destroy the world and then remake it, and if he found the tale wanting, he would destroy again, and again. His heart was a block of granite, his face, once red with blushing heat, remained pale and pasty white. He felt stirrings in his crotch, knew he had to pee, but held it back and tightened his stomach bravely against the oncoming traffic of insecurities.

In his hand he held a briefcase. Thirty meters away, at the airport – because Britannians wanted their Honourary Britannians to get the best, and the best was a noisy polluted airport with sixty security gaurds and two Southerlands – old and archaic – were on guard. Their head security guard was a fat foreign fuck named Barco Henderson who had bought a nobility position in Britannia. That was worth a fortune, because someone in turn had to give up their nobility to sell a person his spot. That price wavered with the times, but always the auctions went up in the millions. Barco was supposedly an Egyptian head of a mafia group, illegal activities, low morals. Lelouch knew caution rearing its head back in an ugly smirk. He – a one man army, his brain and his feeble body – would defeat one of the greatest criminal minds of the century.

He rode the subway and rode the bus, rode the town around and rode standing straight around and around. He was tired after, tired like a bulldog gets tired when its master kicks it around in a drunken rage. He felt tiredness in his weary bones, and heard it in the dull aches behind his ears. He felt drowsy on the inside and drowsy on the outside, and his mask was hot and suffocating. His pants were wet with piss, and stank mightily. People edged away. It did not matter, nothing mattered except his plan and his goal so he told himself to stiffen up and develop thick skin. He wanted this, wanted the humiliation because it meant attention, it meant rumours. Lelouch would have to start a wave of rumours, a sea of torturous rumours. He had been subtly practicing in school to great affect. He knew the psychology behind this science of people, of controlling nations, because he had royal blood and he was meant to rule. He had the power of kings in his brain, a tiny little voice that told him he was better than these crickets, that he was a giant and could stomp them in the mud if he so wished. Receiving grace from the power of kings, the royal blood, he held himself back, sustained his being on control and thrived on restriction, self discipline. Whispers ran across the cities and soon will resonate throughout the country. He did not think he could go beyond that little arbitrary boundry, not yet, he simply did not have power yet. Power of Kings. Was it Code Geass? Was it ambition and genius? Power of Kings. Greed. Envy. Jealousy. Hate. The lesser emotions, or the greater emotions?

"Power of Kings!" Lelouch said aloud. The people full bus silenced, still looking at him.

Strange boy.

NEWS REPORT: Today the first Britannian airport to be built in Area Eleven, Airport Clovis, was destroyed in a targeted assassination attempt at Prince Clovis, who had been visiting then for a part of his 'grand tour de Eleven'. A masked man was also reported, sitting and reading the newspaper in the waiting section on the airport. He held a sign in his hand that said, "EXPLOSIVE CARNIVAL" and was assumed by security forces at the airport to be a harmless passenger. The sign may have been a code anagram type deal to refer to Prince Clovis and his impending death trap. Investigators remain mystified.

Lelouch's plan was simple, but in case he needed some back up, some added security, he brought along his .547 magnum RF – rapid fire. With this hand held gun he was protected because he was packing iron and he had an element of surprise. Now the only remaining element he had to deal with was confronting these terrorists and getting their obedience. Every king needed his follower, and Lelouch was going to get his knights of the round table.

"So we are here," he said to the room, smiling a little. His mask gleamed in his cupboard, but before him sitting around this round conference table the hotel had so graciously provided were numerous stock owners – all who had vested major interest in one science fundamentally – medicine, biochemistry, the science of extending the lives of rich old fools who had more money than sense. 'Long live greed,' Lelouch said in his mind, 'For without it, my plans shall have no sustenance.'

"Doctor Lamperouge," said one of the men sitting in a blue suit. He was as thin as a stick and his name plaque read, "Dr. Arizona, m.d" but his eyes read cold caution. "We had spoken about your biochemical research into magnetic fields some number of years ago, when you were just applying for your degree with your thesis."

Lelouch remembered it well, the time when he had attacked airport Clovis singlehandedly, when he had gained the trust of a small terrorist group. Three years had passed; Nunally received her degree in teaching and taught everyday at Ashford Academy, Lelouch had gone on to receive his doctorate after a brilliant work published under his own name due to Nunally's insistence, and most importantly, he had started a company to investigate his project all in an effort to get close to the exiler of his life – Code Geass.

"I demand thirty thousand credits, in cash for the first month start up period. I will need that much money to build a high tech lab, as well as to attract several key scientists from Britannia into Area 11."

"So you will continue your research in Area 11?" Dr. Arizona asked, "In this war infested place? Your research, if it is worth the monetary expenditure, will suffer for it."

"I have outlined my reasons for this location to be the base of operations. The research is clear, the arguments precise and solid against doubt," Lelouch explained. "Already Coca Cola Scientific Research Industries have offered me thirty thousand credits as well for the first start up month. The only reason I am hearing you out is because of our past history."

Coca Cola Scientific Research Industries, or C.C for short, was a financial empire for funding scientific research, for which they would take the profits as the sponser of the invention.

Lelouch would never agree to such bargains. He had written his name on the company ledger of position C.E.O and he would not change it, or ruin his good name. That would draw even more attention than moderate success. Small amounts of success was expected of brilliant men. And really he was just using this research as a front for his money laundering scheme from gambling.

The years that had passed were productive. Lelouch had established his terrorism within Area 11, striking like a viper at the weak spots, using all his cunning and slyness to get real results, results that actually mattered, that were a thorn to the soft ass of Britannia.

The hard skull would come later.

He sometimes fantasized about meeting Prince Schniezel, the second in line to the throne and his older brother, in a battle, be it of wits, chess, or military endevours. He was not sure of his victory. That was a profound statement, and even more significant was the fact that he admitted his insecurity to himself. He was scared of course, just a boy, just a man perhaps, fighting Britannia with everything in himself, mind and body. But soul? There was no soul in his fight, just cold and merciless cunning, ambition heightened to the sharpness of a sword and burning in the fire of his hate. But soul? No. His soul was with Nunally.

His soul was within Nunally. She was his innocence, personified. She was everything to him that mattered and he would build a world where she could be happy. He would try, anyways. But if he faced the hard skull of Britannia, the prodigies and the ones who excelled, Cornelia even, could he win?

Could he lose?

No, there was no going back for him now, it was now or never, and he would either get what he wanted, or walk out.

"Now or never?" Lelouch said. They didn't respond so he walked out.

Ten minutes later his cell rang, and Dr. Arizona said they would take the deal, and his cash would be ready within the hour.

Lelouch told him to make it forty five minutes and hung up.

He had the money. He had the mask. The seed was in place, and the time seemed ripe to exploit the tense situation. "Three shipments of Gaslow clones are being transported by Britannia to their junk site in Southern France. We can use such equipment, even if it is archaic, and fund some minor projects that I have been looking into," Lelouch said to the group. He as usual had his pistol hidden, well oiled and ready to draw. He tended to pay Kallen more attention because he had been fooled before, when he thought she was just a student. The group did not really have its loyalty to him, but they respected him. He was the masked man who had almost killed Prince Clovis. He was the man who had tracked them down, convinced them to join him and he was the one who had given them three times the sum another person had given them a few days prior, Lelouch.

The crimes were committed. Some suspicion remained, was it Lelouch who was Zero? Some were not so suspicious. It did not matter. Under Zero's leadership, the terrorist group grew in both prominence as well as richness. As Tamaki put it they finally had enough money for themselves to go out on dates, and if that wasn't the definition of rich, then what was? Oghi liked how it was going so far, the operations ran smoothly and he knew he was never a leader anywyas, and this Zero fella was a leader, could lead, would lead, would lead them to greatness perhaps, in time. And in time, he would reveal his masked face, or Oghi would be forced to reveal it for him.

This might be it, the time had come. "Show us the face that lies behind the mask," Oghi said, his voice iron. He had lead his group for a long time after the death of the previous leader, Kallen's brother, and he had grown, learned. He would never be as good as Zero, but he still had a bit of steel in his heart and he would not back down. "The time has come, Zero, if you want us to follow you, then show us the truth. We have seen your ability and now we need to know your identity."

Zero was silent for a long time. They were in a junk yard, and the sea gulls that flew overhead with eyes out only for scraps of food made few noises. The very air seemed to breathe silence. Then Zero held out both arms and he looked like a bat with cowls of silken purple and black cloth under his arms running to his legs. "Do you want proof of my identity? Why, so you can be sure of my alliance with you? That I am on your side, and am not going to betray you?"

Zero laughed, his laugh was mocking and cold, like the squawk of a crow, Oghi thought. He pulled out his gun. He had been ready for this moment, and when he pulled it out he was surprised.

Zero had drawn faster than him and the barrel of a short pistol pointed down his face, inches away from his nose. "Drop it," he said, his voice as deadly as the hiss of a rattlesnake. Oghi did so, but the others had also – seeing a confrontation build up – pulled out their guns. Zero was outnumbered five to one, no way to win. Kallen hadn't drew her gun – Oghi didn't know if she was carrying iron – but it was still five to one.

Zero did not look scared, Oghi wondered if the man was insane. Must be, maybe if we open his mask we will find the face of a refrain addict, a genius refrain addict, or perhaps some foreign guy with a fire for Britannia, maybe a cemented socialite, a stock broker. The possibilites dazzled him. Curiosity killed the cat, yet Oghi thought that may be this time it would be different. This time, the cat got the curiosity fulfilled and everything turned out okay and the bigger cat, the bully cat, choked on a fur ball and died leaving the world free of one ugly bully, yet Oghi knew very well that the emperor of Britannia would not choke on his dinner tonight. Or the next night. "Will you shoot me?" Zero laughed again, "Do so, but remember what I have shown you, and wonder in your minds whether I have a failsafe, perhaps a hidden bomb set to self destruct unless I call a number at exactly the right time?"

Zero took out a cell phone with his other hand and dropped it to the ground, crushed it beneath a black leather boot.

Oghi felt a sweat bead drop down the sides of his jaw, and he could tell the others were scared too. Some of the stunts Zero had led them through amazed him, and he knew there was genius, an intelligence that went beyond the human norm sitting patiently beneath the mask, waiting and watching totally expecting Oghi's betrayal.

That scared Oghi. He felt an urge to tell the group to stand down, and let it go. He knew that if did so, the group would obey. Oghi was the original leader, before Zero, and they trusted him more. But Oghi thought of the benefit of the group, and knew that if he did tell them to back down, they would never be able to stand up to Zero again. It was hard to pluck the courage to meet the gaze of death itself, or Zero, in this case, the man of miracles; Hard to meet the gaze of something otherworldly, alien and cold, monstrous and fleeting.

"Take off your mask, or you will have bullets in it." Oghi said with a stiff face, he would not show fear, nor would he show just how close he came to wetting his pants, seeing that blank black mask and that black barrel held in an insane man's thin glove covered hands. They looked soft. Oghi knew he could break it, snap it in two if he wanted, but he would be dead, bullet in his forehead.

Zero looked at Oghi and Oghi looked back at Zero. "This is what they call a Mexican Ballbuster," Oghi said, "When neither party will back down."

"Very well," Zero said, his tone of voice sounding a bit defeated. "I shall show you my mask. This is my true face, the one that I could not show to the world."

Zero took off his mask (Oghi thought he did. He heard the hiss, a hiss of a machine. It might have been the mask, or it might have been the black gas that shot out of the cell phone. If Zero had taken off his mask, Oghi had missed it). None could see the face that was beneath it for moments before a cloud of black gas erupted from the broken cell phone, a gas so dark and poisonously sickening, it brought the terrorists down like wooden dolls. When they woke up with raging headaches, nauseous and sickly bodies and an all around feeling of death in their bones, they all unanimously agreed to let the bad lie in the mud and not keep digging where their curious cat claws itched to dig.

The next day they met at the same spot and Zero continued as if nothing had happened, talked about the shipments that were being brought to Britannia's junkyard in Southern France, their plans for getting the machines and handing it to a group of technicians for hire to fix it up for a small fee, and then do an attack on Britannia's capital in Area 11, the tower of Clovis. It was newly built, and made up of the best materials the world had to offer, with an outstanding security force. Lelouch had not given up on his plan to cut the head of the snake, and if the airport trick had not succeeded – not that he truly expected it would have – he knew he would have to try another tactic.

Mr. Archebello was old blood, and that meant respect, it meant money, old money and pure money and more importantly a lot of money. He had always lived the rich life, not a direct heir to the crown but a close one nonetheless, if the entire immediate royal family died, he would be sixteenth in the line of the throne. And that meant something important, a free pass at life, just coast your way through because you are a noble, and what you do or say doesn't matter as long as you make money and keep money and enjoy your money. He had a small family but he left them, because he thought they were cheating him, stealing is money, stealing his mind, poisoning his coffee. That's why he always made his own coffee despite having three maids in the mansion at all times.

But his family hadn't been doing any of those things, Mr. Archebello knew that or he may have once known that. Things got so fuzzy in the realm of memory, he found it so hard to remember the important things, the important names. Why, just this morning he forgot the name of the Emperor

(Charles, its Charles, goddamit, he reminded himself)

And yesterday he forgot the name of his newphew. But he didn't forget Lelouch, the man who had beaten him at chess and more importantly the man who renegaded on his promises. "Damn him!" he screamed at the television screen which was showing a rerun of an archaic series called, "Robo Cop."

He looked at the main character, part man and part machine and more importantly a cop, and he suddenly got an idea. It just popped up, fully planned and ready to go and a bit rough on the edges, but that was alright, because he was a noble. Success came easy to him. Chess was easy, life was easy and more importantly getting his money back was going to be easy. Because money was important and having a lot of it was just what he did, what he was born to do. Thirty fucking thousand dollars, I'll get my money you fucking rugrat, and maybe a chunk of your flesh too, he thought as he dialed the number of his lawyer.

Julius Grechen - Robert's father and a general asshole to everybody and everything that annoyed him, which was many things almost countless to name yet he probably succeeded in doing that due to his enormous amounts of ranting and raging at all that annoyed him - picked up the phone. "Hello," he barked in the receiver gruffly, "What do you want?"

"It's me, Archebello, and I need a favour."

"What do you need?"

"Do you know the name of a hit man I could hire?" There was silence on the other end, blissful and pure. Yes, bow down before my power, my ruthlessness, Mr. Archebello thought, grinning. The maid who accidentally walked in his office squeaked and ran out, her delicious rump the best part – or view – of his day.

Julius laughed, and replied, "A hit man you say, my Mr. Archebello how low have you descended."

"Will you provide me with a contact or do I have to find one myself, you worthless scumbag?" Mr. Archebello said, snarling in anger. His mind was red haze and a bit of confusion. He by chance caught his reflection on the glass of a drink of vodka and never had he seen such annoyance on human eyes. This Lelouch really got to me, he realized, and that thought sobered him. It was not Lelouch and the money that got to him, it was some upstart scumbag who had defeated him in something that he was always good at.

It was his pride, snarling in rage, his pride that used the money as an excuse to hurt his opponent. He has already won, said a small part of his mind, drowning in his rage and jealousy. A man barely out of school beats me; I must either be getting old or getting cheated. There is no other possibility. He lit a cigar and puffed on it, waited as his lawyer got out a small piece of information, a number and a name to someone who knows someone who may know a few people who know a few more people. "I want you to make the calls, Mr. Grechen, its what I am paying you for isn't it?"

"How much will you pay me, approximately?" Mr. Grechen asked, "I don't think my usual by the hour fee will cut it, seeing as this activity is something of an illicit nature." His smooth and sly voice was like a snake, but Mr. Archebello did not notice, nor did he care.

It isn't about the money, he realized, and that too was not enough to make him care.

"Thirty thousand EU dollars," he said and hung up on an astonished Julius Grechen.

Grechen looked at the phone in silence and then felt annoyance once more cascading down on him from the inside. He wanted to slap that old fatso, Mr. Archebello and his stupidity, hiring a hitman, my goodness, and talking about it on a public line too where any cop with initiative and balls could pick up on their conversation. Didn't he know the latest knightmares could tap phone lines? That stupid bastard, Grechen tightened his fist and snarled at the dead phone. Slamming down the receiver, he went through his files one more time and made a call. Told the gangster boy what he wanted (was it a gangster boy, a street rat hoodlum, or was that just a cover for an organization – or a person – more sinister, more concealed): the supposed hit man, a guy who went in and stuck a knife or a needle or a bullet into another guy for a bit of green.

"I don't want to deal with this crap," he told his wife over dinner. His son looked interested, but not overly so. Wouldn't be interested in my business, he thought slightly bitterly, wouldn't be interested at all, nothing in his empty head but labs and science and shit like that. But indeed Robert was very interested, because he knew Lelouch had talked a bit about his chess match with Mr. Archebello and how that was integral to his start up business on the side, more specifically a rebellion against Britannia. Strange hobbies, he had commented at the time, but although it was srange it also made sense. Lelouch was obviously doing a little social study or psychology study on a huge scale, perhaps, or something similar, something that Robert did not care about because it was not science. He was a hard core nerd, listened to rap music and did his homework, smoked a little tobacco every weekend and that was that. At graduation night his friends had invited him to a party, where he got drunk. That was the night he lost his virginity and got an STD, showing up on a test two months later. "But Robert, we can easily cure this, there's nothing to worry about," Doc Maggie said with a little laugh, her computer face a digitalized rendition of a person, or an AI dressed up as a person, Robert thought. The lesson from that unfortunate experience, where he had to have a rash on his face for three months due to one of the side effects of the little blue pills Doc Maggie had sent him by mail (came on time for once, within the hour), was never to trust anything good in his life, because everything had its shadow. It was a little pessimistic but it worked, it was a tight fic. His girlfriend, Susan, the one who had given him the STD in the first place, told him his pessimism was charming, so he kept it.

He sure as hell wouldn't trust that this hit man thing and Lelouch were unrelated. So he wrote off a quick email, warning Lelouch – or Zero, maybe, Robert considered as he typed in the message – about the hit man Mr. Archebello would hire from his father.


	2. Chapter 2: On the Launchpad

Chapter Two

The night was dark, stormy and boiling hot. Lelouch raced down the controls of his nightmare with nimble fingers, moving in an iron suit of metal like it was his second skin. He did not do it as gracefully as Kallen, as deftly as Oghi, nor as quick on the sly as Tamaki, but his genius made him a good pilot nonetheless and he trained, he fought, he bled. But not often.

If a king does not lead, will his men follow?

He had asked Nunally that once, when he tried to teach her chess. She never understood chess, why one needed to fight. Why not just get along? She had asked. He answered, I don't know, and he really didn't know.

But he wanted to know, wanted Nunally to live in a world where the question of fighting never arose in the first place. That was his goal, his quest and he would do anything to have it so if it meant learning a few moves or putting himself in a position of low to moderate risk in pursuit of a glorious image of himself as a mysterious masked hero to the Japanese, then so be it.

Besides, his mask ensured that nobody knew he was having fun piloting the knightmare. "K2 to the right, and bottom crunch, attack at a forty two degree angle with your Missile Booster." The yellow knightmare in question attacked one of the vertices of a government building, it collapsed in on itself, being as it was the weak spot. Lelouch was glad he read the architecture of Paris and London book last night, even though he had to skip on a dinner date with Shirley and Nunally (who kept trying to coax the two together, not that Lelouch minded, after all Shirley was quite pretty, but he just had better things to do). "K2, retreat three meters, Q1 fire your Ultimate." Kallen's knightmare frame was made in India, and had a secret weapon, quite experimental and never used on the battle field, a nuclear deshielder, which was basically a missile that fired extremely harmful gamma rays at a target, which if it were a nuclear missile shield (made from a net of radiowaves) would get deshielded. But if fired at an object, like a car or a truck, then the object would turn to dust.

And an object in question came down at them – a knightmare frame, a police guard – that turned to dust right before it touched them.

"How did you know he was there?" Kallen asked. Lelouch could have told her he knew because he had scouted the place a week ago in his school uniform posing as a harmless Britannian student on a field trip, but he didn't. He just kept his silence, and Kallen gave an annoyed but expecting sigh.

"C6, C7, C8, attack the three police cars with your missiles and K1 to K10, you ten go with Oghi's tank to location delta."

The raid of the Gaslow clone shipment was underway, and going well, as well it could be when the resistance they were expecting was an underestimate. There were at least twice that number. Lelouch hastily changed his strategy and hoped it would work, not as good as his old one, but good enough if the enemy commander was an idiot, or better yet a Britannian noble. He knew how nobles thought, and they were worse than idiots because they followed textbook predictable patterns of war making, while idiots sometimes came up with something original.

Lelouch had thirty knightmares under his command, as well as an old military tank – at least 200 years old if not more, refitted with the newest armor and battery charges, as well as a missile launcher that actually used gunpowder. Lelouch made it in his chemistry laboratory, a big pile of gunpowder and shells that would take down any metal, or at least put a dent in it. He wanted to use it on Prince Clovis's tower, but he decided the shipment of Gaslow Clones, which was basically a big ship filled with a hundred and ten old but useful knightmare frames, enough to form an army, might be a trap and if so he needed some heavy artillery.

The cop cars turned to molted metal as the Triple C team as they liked to be called fired away with no reluctance or regret. People were awakening; it was the dead of night. But that was okay. Zero ordered the ten Ks to escort Oghi and the tank he was driving to the ocean port of Britannia. They met heavy resistance.

"Zero, we're being fired upon by a coastal guard unit of fourteen knightmares," Oghi said in a tense voice, "We're surrounded, they seem to have formed a triangle formation around us with three knightmares as the point covering our retreat. I would say we are in the middle of the formation, and they were expecting us."

"This is a trap then," Zero said calmly, "But I shall unravel it. I was expecting this."

"What?" Tamaki said, being one of the Ks. "You don't know what you are doing! You're going to get us killed! We're surrounded by Britannia's best pilots and we're operating shoddy machinery."

"Yet you were all fitted with the G missiles, were you not? These will take down the buildings surrounding you, which have defective construction errors," Lelouch explained. "Hold your ground and attack the vertices coordinate with your G missiles, you are all within range."

The coordinates were given, targeted and fired with deadly accuracy. A huge red building made of dying bricks fell in a pile of rubble on the group's main front, and half their force was wiped out. The others were able to dodge the falling buildings, having calculated the trajectories of the missiles and their effects. These are good fucking pilots, Lelouch thought; to escape my perfectly executed trap is nothing short of amazing. But he had another trick up his sleeve, "Oghi, fire your cannon at the Sakuradite Warehouse, thirty degrees north, forty one degrees above horizontal."

Oghi did so, and a resounding boom resonated in the night air despite the storm. Then a bigger boom and another and another after that. It started a chain reaction that took down an approaching army of helicopters. Zero continued to explain in a clinical voice (he was practicing sounding like a professor as he had agreed to take a job at the University of Britannia - Location: Area Eleven, within capitol, so Lelouch could get closer to Prince Clovis), "The Sakuradite Warehouse is a long chain of explosive Sakuradite sources that have not yet been chemically treated with radium and argon nuclear emmisions yet to stabilize the nasty proton fluctuations. This makes the sakuradite very volatile in the presence of a high temperature and a catalyst, carbon dioxide, which was released upon the impact of the tank's missile. That was why I needed such an old and inefficient cave man weapon like gunpowder."

As the explosion of sakuradite filled the air with hot flame and boiling weather, it created a gust of wind that drove two knightmares off their aim and allowed the Ks to fire them down quickly. Another three Ks were gone in a rush of missile fire, focally targeted at the weakest point in the K defense of the tank. Perhaps they thought the tank was a transport vehicle, they probably hadn't seen a real life tank since the resistance of Japan. And that was a long time ago.

But when they realized the explosive capabilities of the tank, not taking into account the sakuradite fuel that was responsible for the explosion, they immediately fell into Lelouch's trap. Lelouch predicted their move of targeting the tank by taking out the weakest points in the line and rapidly shouted orders for the Ks to leave the tank and surround the knightmares closing in on the weakest point. They did so, leaving Oghi unprotected. The weak point of the previous defense broke and the Knightmares fired away, the tank took the brunt of the impact. The Ks quickly decimated the enemy knightmares from behind. The tank was a pile of junk.

Oghi was dead.

Kallen screamed.

And Zero, in private, laughed.

Zero could not have petty resistance causing chaos in his rebellion. He would stamp it down. They would not take revenge; they would follow like meek lamb because they would be dazzled by tonight's success, an army of Knightmare frames, ready to fit eager rebellious souls with a talent for piloting. There were a lot of those maggots and Lelouch planned to use every one.

Later, Kallen had a beer. She had the beer warm, and finished it quickly but had to wait for the rest to drink their alcoholic beverages. She had once heard from her brother on a rare occasion say, "Alcohol is a liquid courage, you drink it before battles and your cold trembling fear is replaced by a warm dullness. It clouds your judgement and your senses but at the same time it warms you, so drink it with care Kallen." Then he had handed the ten year old Kallen a sip of his beer and she spat it out. He had looked at her then, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in another and just smiled at her, a warm smile that had made her smile back and nod her head, tell her older brother she would never drink, never smoke and that she loved him despite his vices.

He had laughed. She wished, as she drank her beer after the hard battle, that she could hear his laugh again. But he was dead and Oghi got the leadership position and from then on they listened to Oghi, acted cautiously and thought small. Then Zero came along and changed all that, suddenly they had lots of knightmares – more than ever, but no pilots to spare – and lots of money pouring in from unlikely sources, like the JLF. They were still small perhaps, but they possessed a brilliant strategic leader who used them to their fullest potential. "He's using us," Kallen said aloud and Tamaki agreed. "What do you think is his goal? Liberation of Japan, I doubt it."

"Of course he doesn't care about us and our duties, guys like that always think we're beneath them, just dirty fighters and nothing more." Tamaki growled in anger, "Dammit, Oghi wasn't like that, he was one of us and Zero… Zero…" he couldn't say it because he knew once he did there was no going back. Oghi's death would be avenged, one way or another. Tamaki would do it himself. Oghi was like a brother to him, and to Kallen, and to the whole group. He wasn't brilliant, but he was no shod either. Zero said he needed someone responsible to drive the tank. Oghi volunteered. "There's no proof," he dully said without meaning it, of course there wasn't proof, a brilliant guy like Zero wouldn't leave proof. Apparently someone agreed and they had an argument. After that it was up to K8, a hot brunette by the name of Soyachi who put an end to the argument by snapping her fingers, "I'm going to go ask him," she said.

Tamaki stopped talking and halted in perfect, shocked silence. This was… he couldn't think of anything to compare it with but he knew – instinct told him – that going upfront was a bad idea. "Don't do this," he yelled at her, "You'll ruin everything."

"So you care more about success than Oghi's life?" Soyachi said, her brown eyes glittering with barely restrained rage. "If we don't have honour we are no better than Britannians, if we don't believe in justice we are hypocrites and don't deserve victory."

Tamaki felt himself nodding, she was right, Soyachi was a true rebel, a true Japanese because she had honour. Tamaki uncomfortably wondered if he also had honour. The thought that he did not made him feel nervous. Dammit, he thought tightening his fists over a cup of vodka. The smell of it made him sick. He gulped the drink down anyways and made a face at the disgustingly bitter taste and at the hot feeling in his stomach right after. "Alright, so you ask him, either he'll deny it or he will admit it and where does that leave us? Think about this practically, so may be Zero isn't the man we think he should be but doesn't he get us results? And all this is probably justice in his mind too, like Oghi questioned him the other day about the mask and his identity he probably got threatened so he struck back. He maybe vicious, but maybe that's the kind of leader we need to get Japan back, to free our nation."

Tamaki waited for response, expecting to be insulted and shot down on the spot for declaring Oghi's death as justice – and that hurt, hurt him deep right to his bones - but none came. They stared at him silently, deep in their thoughts and Tamaki drifted off to an uneasy sleep after a while. He awoke to an empty room and went to the fridge, got out a carton of milk and drank the cold liquid down. The fridge was empty after that save for a single beer, which he thought he might save for a rainy day and his stomach growled. He felt better than he had in a while, drinking cold milk on a perfectly normal morning. But today they had gaslow clones, today they had machines, worth millions perhaps, junk machines but their machines and enough weaponry to fit an army that could take down Britannia. Zero used a combination of brilliant strategies and well placed traps to lure the Britannian soldiers into a rigged area that exploded, taking the lives of almost all the soldiers on the ground in one fell blow. The rest of the knightmares that hung back were outnumbered, and the battle ended with a getaway ship taking the knightmares to their own docks, half way across Japan. And here they were, in headquarters with the knightmares hundreds of miles away being refitted with new weaponry as well as dejammed for annoying tracking devices and radars.

Today was a good day. He remembered Oghi's death suddenly when he walked outside to be greeted with a flash of sunlight. It reminded him of the explosion of Sakuradite. Isn't that what it's all about, he thought bitterly, Sakuradite, or money. That's what it comes down to, why this goddamn war started. Damn Britannians.

Damn Zero. He wanted to express his anger, to fight, to hurt and hunt and use his fists but he didn't, he couldn't. Oghi died for a reason, Tamaki had to believe that.

If he didn't, he would go insane.

Their next meeting was a week hence, supposedly about the discussion on what to do with their knightmare frames that they acquired and how best to recruit more members to the black knights. They met at an old warehouse in the Ghetto district. The warehouse had the faded image of a chicken on a billboard on the front of the building, thirty meters high and hanging on a pole that stood horizontally erect against the building. The chicken was smiling and hatching an egg and written with a deep black pensmanship was a quote by peace leader Zhao of Malaysia, who had been taken political prisoner by Britannia, along with the words, "Go Chick!" written on a hatching egg.

The quote did not make any sense and always confused Tamaki when he read it. He didn't look at it this time but knew it was there, the picture and the eyes on the chicken in the picture's middle. Those eyes, Tamaki imagined, might be the eyes of Zero, cold and merciless and totally alien, utterly incomprehensible by human standards. Those eyes, black beads of cruelty, might be the eyes of a man who has tried all avenues and failed and decided that the only way to succeed was to eat your neighbors. Those were the eyes of bank robbers and rapists, liars and murderers, mad men grasping at straws.

Those are Zero's eyes, Tamaki said to himself. He didn't look. He wanted to look, but he didn't. The quote ran across his mind like claws, ripping at his heart and his mind. He thought he understood it when he saw Oghi's melted tank, and knew with certainty of his best friend's death, but he would not fully understand the true depth of the quote until after the Witch with Green Hair gave him the Geass.

He knew if he looked at the chicken he would lose it. He was close to losing it, on the break point between insanity and hysteria. He was stretched and tense enough to shatter like glass thrown across the room. He had found shards on his living room floor, and he did not want to find shards of himself in a grave yard, rotting on ground that was once known as Japan.

That meeting, they entered the room quickly, one at a time. There were thirty of them, members of the Black Knights, and they all knew each other, had grown up with them, gone to Eleven School with them, had learnt hate together and learned how to fight together, bleed together. They were a team.

And one of them was dead. The murderer walked in, and the crowd's hackles rose. If the crowd was one beast, it would be growling and frothing at the mouth. If the crowd was one man, it would be holding a gun, cocked and loaded and trigger finger tWitching. This crowd had their hands very close to their hand guns and their eyes narrowed for murder, hackles in the air and growling in the brain. Tamaki wanted to pull out his pistol and put some lead balls into Zero's chest. He had an insane urge to scratch his armpit and the only thing that made him stop – on both accounts – was Zero, the imposing masked man had a sense of power around him, as if he was born to lead, born to rule. Tamaki could no more be rude and disobedient in front of Zero than a child could be rude and disobedient to a father who was happy to swing the birch and punish with a swift punch to the face. Tamaki was frozen with fear.

Tamaki wanted to tell them to be quiet, to listen to what Zero had to say and act out of the benefit of the group. He was impulsive and brash and often acted like an idiot but he had a good head on his shoulders and knew what was really important, what Oghi would have wanted. In the end Tamaki was a true patriot and loved Japan, and in the end that would be what made Zero kill him. But that was for later, because now, Tamaki had no idea that by shushing the crowd, by raising his support for Zero he had doomed himself to a very short life.

"We shall discuss the most important thing first," Zero's loud booming and mechanical voice resonated in the hall and the group drifted into utter stillness. "It is not the Knightmares we acquired, although that is the marking of the crucial victory that will be the first of many in the swift defeat of Britannian occupation on Japan. It is not the recent alliance issued by the Japanese Liberation Front that I have recently received. No, it is something that weighs on my conscience far more: the death of our comrade, Oghi."

Tamaki laughed, and glared at the same time. His reflection glinted on the glass that made up Zero's mask, black as night and twice as dangerous. He felt fear. Then he felt nothing. And shivering cold rising up in his spine made him tremble. "You asshole, you planned it didn't you?" Tamaki hissed, "I saw you, heard you say to everyone on the radio, mumbled under your breath: I was expecting this. You used the tank, used the explosion to draw a trap around Oghi."

Zero was silent for a moment and then he laughed as well, a mockery of a laugh. "No, Oghi was not the center of the trap. I was the center of the trap. I told Oghi of what my plan was and asked for a volunteer. Oghi said he would find one. I doubt he asked anybody now that I think about it. He volunteered himself and the plan continued, we gained an important piece of the puzzle – the puzzle that is the evident fact of Britannia's power, and can any of you deny its strength?"

The silence was hot. At any time a single spark would make the whole world explode. Tamaki was tense on the balls of his feet. He felt his crotch as tight as a twisted towel. He wanted to piss and have a drink of cold water. He was sweating down his shirt. Was it the heat or was it the rage? Was it the anger or was it the sadness that they were reduced to accepting the help of a murderer, the leadership of a man as cold as a Britannian noble.

"Can any of you deny that you need my help?" Zero whispered. His words carried and sent goosebumps down Tamaki's arms. He wanted to say no but his mind said yes, and so did his heart.

"Make your decision, and make it quick. If you wish to kill me then take your gun and do it now," Zero said somberly, "But you will never see Japan a free nation."

"Can you offer proof so we have no choice but to trust your word?" Sayachi asked Zero, her voice cracking. Her face was wet and she looked mournful. Perhaps she loved Oghi, perhaps she was simply shook up by her first battle. She was new and not used to the life of a rebel but she was a damn good pilot, almost as good as Kallen. Not as good though, nobody was as good as Kallen, not even Zero.

"No," Zero said, "But I can show you the proof and it is up to you to take it for truth or lie. Proof doesn't prove anything, it is belief that does." Silence for a long moment that seemed to drag on. He took out a tape recorder and played a tape of the aforementioned conversation between him and Oghi.

Tamaki thought it could be faked by a good computer hacker. But he didn't think so. He could hear Oghi, but also feel him, because he knew him so well.

"This is real," he said bitterly and it cost him everything to do it. He gave his support for Zero and told him he would follow him and that he was feeling a little ill right now so please may he be excused? He felt like a little kid asking the teacher if he could go pee, or even poo, number one, number two, what to do? "Where you go, I'll follow," Tamaki said, and walked out, peace out Cub Scout, he said to Oghi, the Oghi that was all around him, the Oghi that would never leave him, that would remain in his heart for a long while: the Oghi that was his best friend. The Oghi that had been murdered. Maybe. Tamaki just did not know and he was too bothered to care, wanted to go home and sleep and not be bothered, just go home and drink and sleep like a baby, alcohol sleep.

"So this is it then," Sayachi asked the group and most of them said yes, this was it, just how the way the world worked and how the dance was done, just the tune the devil played and how the mice all followed to their doom. Devil and the mice, Zero and his knights. Goddamn it all, we're just a bunch of rats to him.

He sipped the bottle of vodka he had bought on his way home. One of a case of four bottles, holding enough concentrated alcohol to sedate an elephant. He was supposed to dilute every three teaspoons with a glass of water but he did not.

Tamaki laughed hysterically as he felt the rush of heat that marked the beginning of darkness and oblivion, he would lose consciousness now. He knew that. So he drank some more anyways because he just wanted to feel fucking good after the terrible day he had. If I'm not careful he'll try to squish me like a bug and suck out all my blood. Fuuuhhh… the rest of his thoughts were drowned in oblivion as alcohol poisoning set in.

He died because of his confusion. Died of alcohol poisoning. Drank so much that he puked and swallowed his tongue, suffocated on his own puke, he died in his sleep, and he was buried with Oghi, the fool and the idiot, the one who saved and the one who just bumbled and made mistakes. But he was buried alongside nonetheless and just as honoured, if not more, as there was a considerable amount of behind the counter, back of the hand, in the basement laughter at Tamaki's untimely death, mostly by those who did not like him.

Tamaki wondered if he would live when he drowned, when he felt himself dying. Do you want to live, the Witch whispered. Yes, I do want to live, I want to live so goddamn bad, I don't want to die. I don't want to end up like Oghi. I love that guy but still, Oghi died and I want to live, I want to be better than him for once. He was like family but he died and fuck it all, I just don't wanna end up rotting in the mud, not until Japan is free, not until I have a family of my own, a house and a cushy job as an account with a secretary for nookie on the side.

He was in a misty place of utter silence, on a mountain and the Witch stood beside him dressed in a completely white cloak. Her green hair glowed in the sun with an eiree fearful light and her eyes were dead, deader than Tamaki was dead and he knew he had died, had gone to heaven with this beautiful babe except for the green hair, that was the anchor that pulled him to a semblance of reality. He was dead and he was alive. The Witch with dead eyes – eyes like those beady chicken eyes that he thought might have been like Zero's eyes – glanced at him. Then looked away to stare at a simple wooden hut before them.

They went in, she made tea and he drank it all in perfect silence. There was nothing to say, they understood perfectly. Tamaki, the silly little rugrat who was also a rebel, asked her what her name was. She did not reply. She gave him a power instead, and that was reply enough. She would always be just, "the Witch," to Tamaki, even after he attained the Geass and used it quite mercilessly.

The Geass did not come that day, or the next. Tamaki felt like she was observing him, watching him, peeling away at all his layers and learning everything there was to know about Tamaki, things that he did not know about himself brought to light as she observed him. It made him uncomfortable because he started to observe himself as well.

There was not much to observe about the Witch, she had practice at this game. She let nothing away, as cold as a rock. Just like Zero perhaps, except not. She was better than Zero at this game, at hiding and deception. Tamaki was not bad himself, he remembered stealing toys from his brother, from his brother's friend, money from his father's wallet and change from his mother's purse. He could be sneaky too, just not with his brain but with his hands. He thought she might have been better than Zero, despite the latter's black mask, because she simply did not care: cold, old (though she did not look it but Tamaki knew anyways) and dead to the world and always observant. Her eyes took in everything, her voice was hoarse with disuse, but her eyes told him everything. They talked only of the necessities of living in the hut. In the mornings Tamaki developed a routine, get up, bathe, shave, go out for catching some fish by the pond, go to the village nearby to trade, come back home, have tea (and sometimes pizza if she would be willing to share, she loved pizza) and go to sleep. The days passed endlessly, and try as Tamaki might he did not know where he was. The natives didn't speak his language and there was no technology here in this village.

If he didn't know any better he would think he was in the past, perhaps the French past, dirty and hard, a life of toil. He lived. He forgot.

He forgot everything. He was as blank as a paper unwritten. He woke up one day and the Witch looked at him, really looked at him with all the noise that clouded his soul stripped away and she told him he would do, he was worthy. He was simple, not smart, but simple, and sometimes simple was best, sometimes the heart was enough, bravery would suffice and courage and love, those too would suffice. So she gave him power, a Geass, and he felt the Geass in his brain, always watching. He was chained to it, but he had accepted the power, mostly to please the Witch.

He was falling in love with the Witch. He thought the Witch knew that, but he could never be sure. One day he approached her and she gazed at him and said, "We can't do this. We are separate creatures."

"It doesn't matter," he said, "I don't care about the distinction between us. I care about you."

She nodded, and they made love that night. It was slow and sweet. She was happy, content, after. Her body was warm and soft. Tamaki gazed at her naked body, at the green hair draped across her chest and at her slow breathing. He did not say anything, to speak words about this experience would spoil it, he thought. But he also knew, even before she told him, that this was the last night, the only night she would allow herself to do this. So he enjoyed it, when they were done the first time he went and got a cigarette and smoked it, just enjoying the breeze on his naked body as he stood outside the hut. He saw a shooting star and thought about Japan, made a wish, went back inside and made love to the Witch once more. After it was done, he kissed the nape of her neck, and she kissed him on the lips. He felt a rush of heat rise up his spine and then a net of brilliant multicoloured light surrounded his mind. He was lost, but the Witch guided him and became his north star. He followed the Witch through an endless white space and came to the "Geass", his Geass. The power of kings, the power that would change the world.

He could change his face, change his body. The power of kings, his Geass, was the ultimate disguise, the power of a spy, a sneak: A rat or a weasel, as was his name: Tamaki.

Morning came with the crack of sunlight piercing through Tamaki's eyes. He woke up, and he was not at home anymore. The hut was gone. The mountain was gone, and so was the Witch. He was back in his apartment, empty and alone, and somehow he knew he could not continue his life here anymore, his old life with Zero was dead and gone. He was a new man. The Witch had brought him to life, had given him his heart back. The events that had occasioned his demise were in the past. He was not sure of the date or the time for the pair of them had lived in the mountains for so long, living beside the village. He remembered the days from the time he first made love to the Witch. He had counted the days, marked the days. It was two weeks since that blissful night, the best time of his life. He would never get that time again, never. It made him sad. It made him happy, confused and angry. He wanted to throw a party and at the same time wanted to kill something. He got out a beer from the fridge – there was only one left, the rest of the fridge was stark empty, and sat down in front of the TV, turned on the news.

It was about the latest terrorist attack on Shinjuku ghetto, and how terrorists had escaped with a poisoned gas capsule and were very dangerous, likely armed, led by a mysterious masked leader who had been sighted at the scene of other terrorist attacks but had never made a scene himself. He was hidden, a ghost, a shadow. He was Zero. Tamaki thought about Oghi, because Zero had caused Oghi his life, and he thought about Japan. Weighing the scales was hard enough, but to return to serve a leader who would throw him away like a chess piece was not his idea of how to go about business.

"I have the power of kings, Geass," he whispered to the television. The news caster, Milly Ashford smiled back and discussed the weather, her blond hair reflecting the dancing sun of summer. The future forecast for the next week read hot, hotter, and hottest. Tamaki had never tried his power before this time, honestly there was no need, and he was sort of afraid of trying it too. What if the power killed him? He knew he could do it, the knowledge was as simple and available to him as breathing, an instinctive animal thing.

Now he did it, tried to change his face to the hot news caster: somewhat succeeded. His arms felt like pins needles stabbing sharp pains and his whole body felt like it was melting, changing. The experience was painful and the clothes on his chest were too tight. He looked down to see a pair of breasts under his shirt. He gasped, hastily changed back, but not before looking in the mirror where he had an insatiable urge to apply red lipstick on his lips. He resisted that urge, drowned the rest of his beer after he was back in his original form.

He wondered what the Witch wanted him to do with this power, but she had not specified any clauses beside fulfilling a mysterious contract, details available at a later date, thank ya, come again. Fuck sales, they always screwed with you, Tamaki thought, there's probably a catch to this power, to that night. No way do things liked that come free.

He decided to use the power to restore Japan to its former glory, but how? How… the picture of Prince Clovis on live television brought an idea to his mind. He could do something, would do something.

"Nippon Banzai!" He shouted and threw the glass bottle of beer on the floor. It joined the shards from a past night, when he had mourned Oghi's death by throwing all his beer at the wall. Liquid seeped into the floor; mostly dried, the stink of it convinced Tamaki to get a new apartment first before he did the impossible.

I can do this, I can be a Zero too, or maybe a rebel leader with a secret power, like a super hero. Tamaki chuckled to himself as he cleaned up the shards on the floor. One of them pierced his hand. He tried to close the wound with his new found power but could not. When he changed into Oghi's form on a whim later that night, he discovered that the wound remained an ugly mark on soft brown skin, hurting when he touched it. I can change my appearance but not my physical properties, Tamaki said to himself, this is useful information.

The night came suddenly; a cold chill pervaded the air as Tamaki strode out of his apartment, leaving it behind for ever. He was changed, and he did not – could not – go back to his old life, could not go back to being a simple Tamaki: now he was a Geass Powered Tamaki and that changed everything. "Geass, the power of kings," Tamaki whispered in the night, "Does that make me a king, too? It should. King of Japan has a nice ring to it, a certain…"

"Adventure, a certain sense of adventure," said a familiar voice from behind him. He turned and gazed into the beautiful eyes of the Witch with Green Hair. She was beautiful, dressed in her white gowns and holding a doll from a pizza store Tamaki vaguely recognized. Yes, she liked pizza, the home made ones in the village we lived in, and she used to bake them herself from time to time, and share them with me. The sight of the doll brought back an ocean of nostalgia and intense feeling. For one second, Tamaki wondered if he would hug her, he wanted to, wanted to kiss her and touch her.

"You have always thirsted for adventure, Tamaki," she said, "And I have given you the ability to seek that adventure of yours, the one you have always lusted after." She leaned forward and her eyes flashed dangerously, as if she would kill him without pause or hesitance if it achieved her goals. Tamaki thought she was a bitch, then, but he didn't say anything aloud, because he was suddenly scared of her.

"Don't forget our contract," she hissed at him, her eyes narrowed, her grip on the doll tightening before she threw the object at Tamaki's feet.

Then she walked away and vanished. Tamaki stood there for a long time, staring at the doll she had left behind on the ground. He picked it up, stared at it, and then threw it away again.

And then he picked it up and walked away.

The quote by Zhao was a simple one, just a sentence long and seemed to be layered with multiple meanings. Tamaki had heard things about Zhao the peace maker from Malaysia, strange things, strange stories and incidents because Zhao had always been a strange man. To understand the quote of Zhao that rested on a faded billboard in front of a warehouse used by the Black Knights as a home base was to understand the man himself. And the man was larger than life.

One of his stories, one that Tamaki particularly enjoyed since it was Oghi who had told it to him, and Oghi had heard it from Kallen's brother, the original leader and founder of the Senjuki rebels, as they had called themselves way back when they were high schoolers who used to think they were tough guys and better than any Britannian could ever hope to be, resonated in his mind. The story was strange, almost psychedelic to the listener. It discussed Zhao's trip to Japan, when he wanted to form an alliance with Malaysia, a tiny country that rested between China and the extremely large territory of Britannia. Since those days, Britannia's territory had grown ever larger, while Malaysia's had decreased significantly. It was an important country to China because it acted as a buffer between Britannia on the front, EU to the side, and China dead center surrounded – on the back of it was Japan and India, both conquered by Britannia ten years later.

The Chinese did not want an alliance to be formed between Zhao and Japan, because then they would be surrounded by an ever stronger force, two big countries on their borders lusting for their land was enough, but a Japan Malaysia alliance might be a little too much for the Chinese military, which was still extremely large because of their high population.

Tamaki remembered the way Oghi told the story, when they had gotten their first knighmare. The group was only six in total, and they had just bought a knightmare from money saved up by all six, and a private investor whom only Kallen's brother knew about. He did not discuss it, and the secret identity of the investor who first gave the money to form the Senjuki rebels died with him. They were surrounding a camp fire, deep in a forest near the Okasaga Mountains that would take them – if they traveled far enough and fast enough – right between an important traveling shipment of cloth, one that had been made by Japanese hands and was traveling to Britannia. It was a small thing, just a bit of cloth, but they wanted to do something important, something that mattered, and Oghi had said laughingly, "What matters more than art?" Then he told his story while they ate marshmallows, drank coca cola, and had the great tasting dollar and ten cent chocolates that were really cheap and really filling. Tamaki remembered the chocolates first, and then he remembered the story that went with the quote. The chocolates were juicy, that was hard to find in chocolates. Most were dry and tough to chew, but these ones wrapped in a yellow tin foil paper that had no brands on it whatsoever, just a plain yellow paper wrapped around a chocolate bar as big as Tamaki's hands were the most delicious chocolates he had ever eaten (oh so juicy, said Tamaki once a few months later when they were in a similar position, but that was a story for another day), and he had been the one to buy a whole case – ten bars - for their "pot luck" in the forest, the night before they would do their first attack. Kallen's brother operated the Knightmare for that job, and everyone was fine with that because he had the balls and the skills for it, but Tamaki was the one who brought the chocolate and everybody thought it was great. So he remembered the chocolates and then Oghi told his story while they were eating their chocolates the night before their first attack on Japanese made cloth that would not fall into Britannia's hands if they had something to say about it, and it went something like this.

Zhao was a man of many talents; everyone knew that and everyone admired him for it. He had grown up in a tiny Malaysian village deep center, away from all the war. It was a rural area, where the villagers made oats to be packaged and sent to the soldiers who were fighting Britannia. The Britannians never did make the entire country an Area, but they got a huge chunk of it before backing off – and that was only due to the pressure EU had put on the Britannians backside in Russia. Zhao went to the village school; it was a one room chapel that was also used as the church on Sundays. In the school everyone under the age of thirteen went there, all gathered together early in the morning on wooden creaky seats with their small black chalk boards in their hands – made by North Road Inc., a Britannian company - and a chalk or two with them, as well as a dirty rag for when they needed to erase. Chalk was cheap and everyone was poor.

There were buckets of water too, for when their hands got too dry writing with the chalk and they wanted to wash it. The teacher, Mrs. Wong did not allow them to leave, not even for the washroom, so for the whole four hours they had to spend in the one room village school; they had to hold their piss and poo. That was discipline in itself, but Mrs. Wong also did not allow idle chatter. Zhao went there when Mrs. Wong was old and ailing, dying of cancer of the throat. She still taught but her voice was hoarse and she did not possess the same command as before. But everyone knew she was dying and the students respected her for it, not for anything she did, just for the fact that she was dying.

Mrs. Wong really loved Zhao as a student: mind as quick as a hawk in flight, voice as soft and melodious as a musician and hands nimble and fast. He excelled in mathematics, which was his subject of expertise even after he was hired to be a diplomat, and told everyone he could find that he would be an engineer someday. That did not work out. He left the village school at the age of eleven, having read all the books in the library near the back of the Chapel – only two shelves worth of books on a variety of subjects, but his friends said he had memorized the books and was smarter than Mrs. Wong even. Working at his family fields as a farmer perhaps hardened him to the real facts of life because he did not joke around much after that but he did invent three machines made out of straw, wood and string. One of them was useful for irrigation and helped the entire village make ten percent more produce per quarter after machines of the same type had been installed in all the farming fields. Zhao occupied himself with his machines, and left the farming up to his family. The day came when he was twenty years old, on his birthday that he received an enormous present.

Mrs. Wong had saved up a fortune from her government pay checks for being a teacher and she gave it all to Zhao in her will, told him that he needed to use it to help others, so that's what he did, he used it with the intent of being of service to his country, because he was raised as a patriot by his father and mother and two older brothers, who were farmers through and through. He used the money to buy a government position – because the government was poor and they rarely hired on basis of talent alone, certainly not a farmer boy – and quickly got promoted until he was chief diplomat. Not an engineer like he wanted to be, but a diplomat instead because he had a way with people, could pierce through their souls and give them everything they wanted while giving up nothing important.

Tamaki would later wonder if Zhao also had the power of Geass when they would form their own little alliance, but Zhao would never tell him or show him.

The day came when the government sent him to Japan.

And there he found a woman.

She was bright, just as much as him, and certainly as confident and sure. Her name was Yuun and she loved to draw. Her subject of expertise was art, so Zhao and Yuun made a balanced pair, because math and art were opposites. Zhao said they were complimentary (because he had an enginner's mind), but Yuun insisted they were opposites –

"Just get to the point already, Oghi!" Tamaki had shouted then when Oghi was practically boring them with the life story of Zhao, whom he must have admired greatly. Tamaki wished he had not said it as he came toward the same billboard chicken and egg and Zhao's quote. He had walked there and he had not noticed it, lost in his thoughts of the camp fire and the smoke of the pine wood, great tasting chocolates and coca cola and Oghi's story.

A dead man's story needed to be respected.

Tamaki stared at the quote, and read it aloud to himself on that cold dark night as he stood in front of the home base of the Black Knights. Nobody was here right now, that was fine, and it was just a meeting ground anyways.

"Always without desire we must be found,

If the deep mystery we would sound,

But if desire within us be,

Its outer fringe is all we shall see."

Suddenly Tamaki understood, the quote as well as the story of Zhao and Yuun and how they had formed the Japanese Malaysian alliance, Yuun being the Prime Minister Kururugi's sister. They stood against assassins sent by China – though nobody admitted it was, as that would cause an international incident that would be bad for everybody involved – and fire sent by the populations of both countries who were unhappy with the Alliance since it meant sharing their wealth. Zhao had said this quote in his speech to the nation of Japan, how if they wanted to make a better world they would have to give up their own petty desires and work for the greater good, and Yuun had painted a portrait of Japan itself, a multicoloured thing with people in various walks of life living happily, it was decidedly Japanese and good enough to attract the attention of the entire world, living together and holding hands, one earth and one people, and all the other peace stuff that Tamaki had never gotten before, nor was he interested in before… before the Geass happened.

Tamaki understood now.

He had to work for the greater good: no more petty desires. He was a vessel for the universe, not for the Witch like he had assumed before. The Witch was also a tool of the great universe, and he was the one with the power to change things. A tear fell out of his eye. He thought he had lost the ability to cry after Japan was conquered.

"I'm going to help," he said and he said it to the whole world, because that was Tamaki, always thinking big but without anything to back up his words. Now he had something, he had Geass. He could change identities and go places where no other Japanese could.

"If you want to help, buy me a pizza," The Witch with Green Hair said beside him after she caught up with him in her loafing lazy gait.

Tamaki turned toward her and let out a roaring laugh. The Witch looked bemused.

* * *

_AN: The quote was from tao te ching, a small philosophy booklet written by some Chinese dude in the sixth or fourth century, nobody really knows. I first came across it when I was in grade eleven (when I used to go to a small town high school that was only slightly better than Zhao's village school), an audio recording I downloaded off some website I forget about now, and its always stuck with me. I remember when I used to walk around in this forest near my house, sometimes with a joint in my pocket and a lighter in the other, track recording playing in my ears from a twenty dollar mp3 player (I'm as cheap as they come), and I would think to myself, damn this is some good shit. I may have been talking about the joint or the recording; my memory is a little blurry. My friend always liked hard rock, I didn't, and he said I needed to stop listening to it over and over (the audio book) because it will make me go crazy. Maybe he was right; that was some good shit and I just wanted to recollect it, put it in this story._

_I was aiming for this chapter to exceed ten thousand words, like all the chapters for this story but I figure this is a good spot to end it. I know the chapter wasn't entirely focused on Lelouch but that's just the way the wheel rolls (down hill) and Tamaki does play an important role as a Geass user in this story. But I won't be giving further hints about the future of Tamaki and Zhao, cuz I like to hold my cards close to my heart, so no peepers allowed eh. Anyways I have a week off to chill around, read "mah bookz" and hopefully attempt to clean my room, work out, etc: the normal everyday boring stuff that one seems to have to do in order to live a healthy life. And I have to say, writing is one of them, an important part of my identity, my hobby – an extracurricular interest. Of course writing fan fiction is frowned upon, even more than writing itself but I'm just writing for practice anyways and I am really eager to actually do this project right._

_NO CODE – I first wanted to write this story because there weren't many Code Geass fics available, at least not many that were lengthy and I've always had problems with sticking to a story and finishing it. The only one I did finish was Accident of Time, a Naruto fic that's about sixty thousand words. I did it by writing 10k word chapters, which really helps I think, maybe it's a psychology thing but it helped me stick to the track, focus and write. So if you're wondering why the chapters are so goddamn long as you're reading, that's probably why. I am not really expecting a lot of reviews – when have I ever? – but it would be nice to have some anyways. Code Geass has a pretty small fan base compared to other fandoms like Harry Potter or Naruto, so if you're reading this then help a guy out and review his story._


	3. Chapter 3: Tempus Fugit

Chapter Three

The day was young still. Lelouch thought he could make it to dinner if he hurried, but shopping for grocery had never been his strong suit. He had to cook it too, but Shirley would help him, she always did love to cook for Lelouch and Nunally. They would eat in the living room, Nunally insisted on candles (Lelouch thought it was stupid but he would never say that) and soft music, and then inevitably she would retire for the night in one of the rooms farthest away from Lelouch's room – the main bedroom, but he just needed the space for all his books, although the bed was king sized – leaving Lelouch alone with Shirley for an hour and a half.

It did not take a genius to see Shirley had the hots for him, and vice versa to a small degree. They would sit and talk, idle chatter about things neither cared about but did anyways for the sake of the other and then they would sit there in a half way silence between taking the next step and falling back, just sitting and doing nothing and then watching a movie when Lelouch couldn't stand the awkwardness anymore.

Groceries had always been the bane of his existence, he realized as he stared at three different piles of tomatoes and wondered which ones to get, how many, what size, what density – mass over volume, said the genius inside him but that didn't matter, nothing really mattered except the dinner tonight and the cooking beforehand and spending time with Shirley. Were they merely friends or was there something more? And the most important thing of all, did Lelouch want something more to be there? Right now he could barely manage leading the rebels – making plans and strategies were hard work and took a lot of research – and pursuing his career as post-grad, giving lectures, attending lectures given by his colleagues, doing his research, advising people older than him, and of course worshipping the almighty cocoa bean god with many cups of coffee. It was life and it was his truth.

Sometimes he hated it. Sometimes he loved it, a roller coaster nightmare, perhaps dreamy and perhaps all too real, too real to enjoy and much too heavy to bear on his own, his shoulders were too weak for it. Shirley helped, gave him some time to relax and cool off, that was enough for him. Shirley gave him something to live for. Nunally gave him something to die for. Both were needed for him to maintain his sanity, or else he might just snap and Zero would turn out to be no hero.

Am I a hero? Hell no, he thought as he wondered about – and this was quite common for him – the strategy he had used. Did Oghi really need to die? Yes, it had to be done, the tape recording was as real as they come, Oghi volunteered, he wanted to serve and Lelouch let him serve. So what if he did not tell Oghi the exact nature of the tank's purpose, or if he had slightly manipulated the recording? That was all minor details, trivial in the wide scheme of things.

"A cucumber or a banana, which one would Shirley prefer?" Lelouch asked of himself aloud.

"I'd go with a cucumber myself," said a voice that was all too familiar. It sent a bead of sweat down his spine as he turned around, eyes widening.

"Ah, Kallen, wasn't it?" Lelouch asked politely, giving her that half smile that made him the attention of many a girl's fantasy and rumor. He examined her with a smile; she was fit and trim, wore a red coat over a white tee shirt and a plaid skirt. "How are you doing lately?"

Kallen smiled back but to Lelouch the smile seemed a bit forced, "I've been better," she said, "Recently an important friend of mine passed away."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Lelouch said. He truly was sorry. But Oghi's death had been necessary or else they would never have got their dirty terrorist hands on over a hundred about to be destroyed Knightmare frames. "Have you attended his funeral, yet?"

"I did not say it was a 'he'," Kallen said icily, staring deeply at Lelouch.

Crap, Lelouch thought, that was a rookie mistake, I can't believe I gave my poise away so easily.

"I just assumed it was so," Lelouch said, "If I am mistaken, then I apologize."

"You're not mistaken," Kallen said, "And the funeral has passed already."

"I wonder if you'd like to have dinner with me," Lelouch said, and for a moment he felt heat rising up his cheeks, flaming his face. "And Shirley, and my sister Nunally, it will be just like old times, hmm?"

Kallen looked down at her feet, her eyes downcast. She looked slightly sad, and also irritated. Lelouch had to restraint an urge to touch her, comfort her. He was strangely attracted to her, having seen her true self – she was brave and true and a patriot, and her qualities of independence and skill attracted Lelouch, in a way Shirley had never allured him. He waited for her response. She looked up and studied Lelouch's face.

"Alright," she said softly, "I'll come, to your house then?"

"Yes, here, let me give you my phone number and address," Lelouch said, taking out a piece of paper from his pocket – he carried business cards, now that he was a certified post-grad and researcher – and handed it to her.

She studied it and her eyes widened, "You're a professor, now?"

"Ah, yes," Lelouch said, laughing awkwardly, "Magnetic fields in biochemical medicine; it is quite an interesting subject."

Inside a thought occurred to Lelouch: she would surely know if he had been in contact with the rebels, and he hadn't after giving the guy – what was his name, it was hard to remember because the man had left soon after, and Oghi had voiced some suspicion that he had laundered some of Lelouch's money and given bad instructions – a ton of money, fifteen thousand EU dollars he remembered. Perhaps Kallen was wondering where that money came from, why he had given it, and what he wanted for it, and why he hadn't made contact after he had given the money. It was such a strange occurance after all, some dude giving terrorists money, too strange, just like Zero was strange in his own way. It scared Lelouch that his identity might be revealed, someone might make a connection and so he tried to invent an excuse in his mind and although he thought of thirty different ones, none of them were an airtight fit, he would have to improvise then if Kallen did confront him about the money.

He hoped she didn't. She was carrying a basket, he suddenly noticed, filled with carrots and bananas, and a cucumber tightly wrapped in see through plastic. He looked at it appraisingly and said, "You know, Shirley and I cook dinner but it seems you might have a finer chef hand than me, why don't you come at six – we eat at eight – and help us make dinner as well?"

"Oh," Kallen said with a wry smile, "You just don't want to do any of the cooking, right Lelouch?"

Lelouch laughed, "I guess I haven't changed much since Ashford Academy," he said, "But you seem to have changed, you look different, stronger. Are you in better health, then?"

Kallen nodded, "Yeah," she did not elaborate on her ruse, perhaps thinking Lelouch would catch on to it at once if she tried to bullshit him – he did after all study this for a living.

Well one of his lives, the other was the night, the "ZERO", the rebel and the conqueror.

But right now he was just Lelouch and he would do his best to enjoy his evening with two – three if he counted his sister, but he didn't – attractive women. She said goodbye and left, but not before turning her head back and giving Lelouch a strange considering look, as if she were thinking – no, not just thinking, thinking deeply, pondering like a philosopher – about something.

Does she think I might be Zero? Lelouch wondered.

Well, the dinner tonight will be the best setting to find out what her true motives are, if she does have ulterior goals instead of just having fun with friends.

He paid for his groceries, tomotoes and cucumbers, and a wide variety of vegetables, apples and oranges, a pair of pears and a bag of cherries. Shirley liked to make cherry sherbet when she came over, and she always bought some kind of thick cream milk to do so – it was a really tasty drink, one that Lelouch enjoyed when he mixed it with bourbon but he had to do it sneakily because both Shirley and Nunally – and Kallen, he guessed – had issues with alcohol.

"Zero, my report," said an agent of his in the black knights, Sayachi. "It's about the gaslow replicas we acquired. Thirty of them are defect and unrepairable, sixty need major repairs and only ten are in working condition."

"I thought we had a hundred and ten of them," Lelouch said coldly on the cellphone as he walked down the empty road. A taxi swerved to avoid him as it came racing down the corner. Lelouch frowned, and continued when the taxi had passed away, "What happened to the rest?"

"We have them, they are just really broken, and I mean really damaged, like metal molted and burnt out and stuff. The batteries were going radioactive and about to explode so we dropped them in Lake Ouchigaya," Sayachi said nervously. "We tried to salvage what we could, but like I said, thirty of them were unfixable. We still transported it across Japan in our ice cream trucks – which work as a pretty good cover by the way – and it was safe to do so since the battery core wasn't going radioactive anytime soon, but I also think there might be some booby traps left behind."

"I thought we had examined that side of the agenda already," Lelouch said, "Didn't I pay five thousand to hire a team of special agents from China to search for those bugs?"

"Yes but that's the thing, the Chinese were untrustworthy, we found one of them implementing a satellite survelliance on a Knightmare. We destroyed the Knightmare – couldn't take the risk – and captured the rest of the agents. We have them tied up in the home base, the chicken warehouse, but they're uncooperative."

"I see, the money is safe?"

"Err… no," Sayachi admitted, "We had to pay them first before they would come."

"Keep them as hostages, we will not bargain yet but they will want the agents back some time. Then we can always have a certain level of insurance. Agents are known for having secrets in their brain."

"Do you want us to…?" Sayachi paused, and gulped. "Torture them?"

"No," Lelouch said, "Not you, anyways. But if they don't talk I will seriously consider that option."

"Kallen says you wouldn't torture, you're not that type of person."

"She doesn't know me very well then," Lelouch said and hung up.

They cooked. They had dinner.

Watched the tube.

Went home.

Not much of an evening compared to a dramatic battle, but Lelouch wasn't living the "ZERO" life right now. He was a normal prodigy of a youngster, a professor at a young age and he played his part well.

He enjoyed it, the change, the difference between being a war leader and a normal person. In better circumstances he would have made a name for himself as a scientist, a chess player and a politician or diplomat.

No, not diplomacy, but politics certainly.

They had a dish that Kallen and Shirely worked together on (and wouldn't let Lelouch touch, claiming he would spoil it): a spicy curry with bits of chicken and pork, and of course the cherry sherbet made its appearance, but it was lightly flavored with a delightful Japanese spice Lelouch had never heard of. They joked, laughed, and Nunally seemed to enjoy it. That made Lelouch happiest of all.

"Did you know, when we had first started the festival of a thousand stars back in Ashford Academy at the insistence of Milly, I said to her, we need some extra hands and she was the one to suggest Kallen?" Shirley told Nunally with a laugh. "I remember Kallen's face too at the party, when she got her hair wet with wine."

"That guy was always a clown," Lelouch agreed, "Rivalz knew how to make jokes alright, but he's not kept in touch, has he?"

"He's gone back to Britannia, last I heard," Shirley said, "Living with his uncle and working on making calculators of all things."

"Really?" Lelouch pressed curiously, "Tell me more, please."

Shirley was delighted to and explained how she and Rivalz had both gone to Britannia at the same time, taking the same plane and had met coincidentally without knowing of the other's traveling plans. Rivalz had told her that he was going to make the best calculators in the world, ones which had rocket engines attached to them and a built in TV screen as well that would pick up all the channels broadcasting in the Northern Hemisphere, - "Because the TV in the Southern Hemisphere is a big fat joke!" Rivalz had said, laughing through his airplane meal.

"That does sound like him," Nunally said softly, her face amused. Kallen's twinkling eyes told Lelouch everything, he almost smiled at her as he leaned forward to whisper a joke in her ear – about the wine Rivalz had washed her with on her acceptance party on the student council but Shirley suddenly sent him a frosty glare, which stopped him, so he didn't say anything and just nodded his head. What was that about, he wondered as he sipped his glass of cherry sherbet. Is Shirley jealous or something?

They were enjoying themselves and had a good time, but it was not to last. It felt too soon, tempus fugit, time flies. Latin – I wish I never had to learn it, Lelouch thought, tempus fugit tempus fugit, fuck the tempus fugit I don't want this to end.

Tempus Fugit.

Zero's responsiblities were many, Lelouch came to realize over the years he worked as a masked rebel leader, and the years passed quickly enough. Nunally settled into her life as a teacher – she was already settled from the moment she set foot into Japan, it seemed to Lelouch. There was a sort of serenity about her no matter what the circumstances that Lelouch would never be able to match.

They made progress, hidden in the shadow and striking at Britannia's weakest points. The operation of acquiring the multitude of Knightmare frames was, in his opinion, his best yet, but after that the Black Knights had sort of lost enthusiasm, and the recruits were not many. They had too many machines and far too few skilled pilots, which was the opposite of the situation when Zero had first introduced himself to them.

Lelouch blamed it on Oghi's death, the Black Knights were no more the Knights of Justice after that but rather Knights of Convenience.

They had lost the fire, the courage, the bravery, expected miracles but provided haphazard fights to Britannians. And so they were locked in a stalemate, the rebels led by Zero and the Britannians. Prince Clovis still ruled, and Nunally still enjoyed her life as she always had – with one sole exception of course where she had lost her eyes and movement in her legs.

Lelouch did his research and was going nowhere with it, couldn't go anywhere with it without one crucial element he was missing – a giant pile of Sakuradite. But that stuff was really expensive, in the millions of dollars worth, and it would be used up to build a giant Sakuradite magnet that would not – could not – provide results he was seeking.

He still had his company of course and they were very successful, having put out seven different products based on magnetic fields that Lelouch had worked on. He was almost well known in his scientific field, not as well known as Lloyd Aspund, earl of pudding, but still, good enough to get a job anywhere he wanted.

He didn't leave Nunally but he wished for something. A miracle. Anything.

And then the miracle came.

It came quite a bit before actually but he hadn't noticed it, put it together before.

The miracle first started with a relatively minor and easy to sort out event, at least in his book, where his friend Robert the Britannian who did cruel experiments on rats called him up one rainy night and told him his father had sent a hit man after him on Mr. Archebello's urging.

And it ended with the death of Prince Clovis, and Princess Euphemia.

Lelouch suspected a power was at play, one not seen by humans very often.

Lelouch suspected "Code Geass," a project Lloyd Aspund had worked on for eight months before abandoning it. Lelouch had acquired the research notes from Mr. Archebello, but hadn't fulfilled his end of the deal in convincing Lloyd to give up science. He hadn't even tried, knowing a futile venture when he saw one.

Code Geass was a secret project that had the backing of the Emperor himself, one that Lelouch had learned by drugging Jeremiah with hypnotics and alcohol. The very thought sent his heart racing, and adrenaline surging in his body. It was a power beyond all others and he wanted very badly to grab a hold of it as it might mean the difference between obliterating Britannia forever and living his existence with Nunally and the mediocre Black Knights in relative obscurity.

The true chain of events does not start with the assassin sent by Julius Grechen, Lelouch amended in his thoughts as he sat on the Throne of Britannia, crown upon his head that claimed his right to rule over one third – almost one half – of the world, it actually starts with Suzaku Kuururugi and Jeremiah Gotfield.

The throne room of Britannia was at least as big as Ashford Academy, seeing as it held over twenty thousand seats. In the middle of the room was a giant round pit, like a gladiator ring. Sometimes Lelouch felt like a gladiator, being the emperor was being cast away to the lions and he had to fight to survive a hundred political wars that went on every single day. But he ruled. He enjoyed and when he got too stressed he would take a Valium pill – better living through chemistry had always been a sincere belief of his – and he became calm again, felt good, felt 'high' and soft, like he was floating on a very comfortable bed high in the clouds, away from all the stress and problems he faced. Nunally wouldn't have liked him taking drugs but he had killed her so what did it matter.

Right now he was alone, well not exactly alone. There was his ten Knight of Rounds kneeling before him, one of them being Kallen and another being Princess Cornelia.

"The true sequence of events," Lelouch whispered, "Is so long, ever so long." Nobody heard him, they all saw the iron strong emperor – at least strong in mind, if not in body, for he had a frail and sickly body and looked as if he would not last long.

"My Emperor?" Kallen said, her eyes bowed in deference, "Your five dime birthday arrives, when you shall turn fifty."

"I know, Kallen," Lelouch said, "I know."

"Do you wish for a similar celebration as last year?" His Knight of One, Bismark, asked.

"No, no," Lelouch stood up and extended his arms, as if encompassing the whole world. "My celebration will be grand indeed, celebrating, not just my ten year reign but also the memory of Nunally."

"I see," Princess Cornelia said. Her eyes were warm and understanding. She was old but still beautiful, "That will go well with the public, I think. They loved Nunally."

"Yes, they did," Lelouch said softly, "But if they knew the truth, would they love me the way they do now?"

"It wasn't your fault," Kallen exclaimed, "You were forced to! Tamaki had a gun to your head, and he forced you to kill Nunally with your-" She broke off.

She could not speak it, could not say that unspeakable evil that had consumed Lelouch.

"V.V," Lelouch spat, "V.V gave me something, a curse I cannot forgive him for nor lift it off me."

"He gave you Geass," Kallen whispered, her head bowed in a mixture of disgust, shame and fear.

"I vowed I would never use it again," Lelouch reminded her, "Never, Kallen, no matter what."

"You didn't have to kill her," Princess Cornelia spoke after a long moment of silence, "You could have died instead."

Lelouch laughed, a cold and hard laugh, one filled with bitterness. "I wish I had the courage to do that, I wish it were so every single day I reign over Britannia."

"It wasn't your fault," Kallen repeated.

But it was, Lelouch knew, he had become ZERO for Nunally's sake and ended up killing her.

The universe loved irony.

But it wasn't over yet, he thought about Emperor Charles and the Code, thought about the sword of Akashi, and clenched his fist tightly.

'V.V,' Lelouch thought angrily, 'You haven't won yet, and your puppet Schniezel won't save you from my wrath.'

_Intermission: For every tree stretching its leaves into the sky there exists a seed in its beginning. For every lie that destroyed a good man's reputation, there exists a nugget of truth. And for every story, there is the point of beginning, the time of reckoning, where one is presented with a fork in the road, to choose the path of safety and surety, the life of caution and obscurity, or to go forth like a lion on a hunt into a forest of the unknown, seeking and mayhap finding its heart's desire. Here we see Lelouch faced with the same choice, when confronted with information too important to ignore. Yet, one day long after, he will wonder whether V.V had orchestrated the series of events. Lelouch had once read a book, a series of books titled 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' and he wondered if his own life took the same grim overtone. For every series there is a beginning, a point of origin, a point of decision, and Lelouch might make two decisions – as Andy the Robot predicted in his horoscopes in one of Lelouch's favorite books (The Dark Tower) – one good, one bad. He hears the twenty fifth symphony of Mozart playing in his ears from memory, hears a song playing from the hotel room beside him that seems to add a spice to the song he hears in his mind, smells the stench of cigarette smoke drifting through the ventilation of the cheap room as he sits on his bed composing a speech: crosses and rewrites, and wracks his brain trying to find something to say to the graduating class – for he is getting his undergraduate degree, and in a few years his phD (although he will not be invited to make a speech then on account of the terrible affair of his last speech) – and when he does find something important to say, it is only at that pivotal time that he unknowingly makes for himself a fork in the road, by attracting the attention of the Man with Information. When he finds something important to say, it is only at the time when he is supposed to give the speech he has prepared the night before. He crumples it up and throws it in the pocket of his blue blazer, for he will not need such bullshit to carry him through. He knows what he wants to say, has always known this, because he knows he is brilliant, but not as brilliant of the heart as Nunally. That is his inspiration in life, the reason he fights, and the reason he laughs. So he talks about his sister Nunally, and in doing so, he inevitably comes across the Code… Code Geass – and it changes his life forever, as only the Power of Kings can. _

Lelouch had finished his undergraduate studies and traveled to Britannia to accept his degree, his diploma, a tiny certificate that represented a certain level of master in his subject of science, more specifically biochemistry and molecular biology.

He was nineteen years old. He had graduated Ashford Academy at the age of seventeen and a half, went straight to the University to study and he crammed as fast and as much as he could in order to finish his studies early. He did not want to rely on the Ashfords

('It doesn't matter, Lelouch, don't kill yourself over school,' Nunally said pretty much every night, when he would study for almost twenty hours straight with only coffee breaks to keep him going)

for money. He valued independence.

The day would have been sunny if not for the constant degree of pollution that the factories making Knightmare frames put out into the atmosphere of Britannia's construction capitol, New York. The city was busy as it ever was, and the night would approach in four hours, Lelouch guessed, walking quickly down the street toward a hot dog stand.

He bought a six pack of soft drinks and three hot dogs to go, called a taxi to take him back to the hotel. He ate in silence, Nunally wasn't here and he missed her, but more importantly on his mind was his upcoming graduation ceremony. Getting into Britannia had been easy – the Ashford family were supporters of Marriane and still had a few connections, strings to pull.

He thought about his graduation speech, highest honor in the class bestowed upon top students. It was the time of his honor and glory to shine as he was going to receive an award to acknowledge his achievement in graduating from university earlier than usual with near perfect marks. Not perfect – Nina got perfect – but close.

And he had worked hard for it as well. So he was eager to take up the cup and present himself to the nation of Britannia's scholarly interests as an upcoming genius of a scientist. He had chosen science on a whim, not because he was particularly interested in the subject but because he needed a degree (he would never get his hands dirty with something like a construction job to make a living) and he wanted to help Nunally's problem, blindness and a wheelchair, trapped and confined. Nunally's freedom really mattered to Lelouch. He was a good brother.

The next morning arrived all too quickly as he walked up the podium, a crowd of seven hundred people watching patiently, dressed in blue uniforms – dresses more like it – with those square hats that had represented scholarly achievement for generations and generations, at least a thousand years since the time of Socrates or even further back.

He walked on the stage, and toward a tall pillar that reached his chest, on it lay a microphone. "Hello everybody," he said with a gentle smile. "My name is Lelouch and I will give you a speech about life." Some mutterings filled the air.

"Everything I know about life I have learned from my sister, who is disabled. She has dealt with adversity in a way that makes me look like a child, and she has done it with the complete and utter happiness of someone who-"

Lelouch choked on his next words. He had brought no note cards – not that they would help particularly – and he knew he was deviating from the usual norms, the patterns established by the society's educational system.

Most top students gave speeches about strength, honor and intellectual ability – about the glory of Britannia. They regurgitated the Emperor's words, taking Darwin to the extreme once again. Lelouch did none of those, would not, his pride would not allow himself to bend and bow to what he believed to be false.

So he started again, took a deep breath and said, "Someone who has the greatest strength of all – inner strength, and a will to not lose hope in the face of highest adversity. These, embodied in my sister, are the lessons of life personified and I would like to share these with you. Although science and education are indeed important for the welfare of mankind, when cannot lose sight of the fundamentals, the things we learned – or were taught by threat of discipline – way back when, kindergarten perhaps. Things like sharing and keeping the peace, and being happy and generous. Those qualities will not win us new countries; will not win Britannia new territories or a greater share of power."

Lelouch looked boldly at the crowd. He felt no fear. He was speaking truth. They could feel a tingle of strangeness too, when confronted with an idea that went against the normalcy of the Empire's usual brainwashing; he saw it in their eyes and in their hands, complete silence and stillness, pure attention on his words, on his own hand gestures. He brought up his left hand to the sky and said, "But we are all the same, under the arc of the blue overhead, weather weak or strong, we all look the same to the birds and the clouds, to the stars. Just maggots, tinier perhaps, specks of dust, and in time everything will turn to dust. This is shown throughout history, all the great empires of the world perish but kindness is eternal, timeless. It lives not through glory or through riches but through person to person, and as long as kind people exist, hope exists for a mankind that is one, perhaps under the flag of Britannia, perhaps not."

Lelouch stopped and slowly, ever so slowly under the watchful eye of seven hundred – students, teachers, family members, all gathered in New York to listen, to celebrate, to take photographs and to enjoy themselves – took out a water bottle from the pocket of his blue blazer (the school uniform) and uncapped it. He drank a sip, and then he dumped the rest of the water on the hard wood floor of the stage. "Our lives are flowing constantly toward the end, toward death, and when our time runs out-"

The water in the bottle had completely fallen to the ground in a great splash

"-then what is left is an emptiness where we used to live, but, if we are kind, there is not emptiness but a fullness, a presence of what we were will still remain. I do not know how to put this feeling in more eloquent words, but I do know this – what my sister knows can be learned by us all, but it is a much harder lesson to learn then a course in biology, or mathematics. Yet, one will not lack happiness when he or she masters the art of kindness. My sister is the proof of that. Thank you." Lelouch gave a short bow and exited the stage.

There were a few splattering of applause underneath the canopy of an awkward silence interspaced with soft and confused mumbling.

When Lelouch had exited the stage he went straight toward the exit of the celebratory gymnasium that the University of Britannia (an umbrella covering many fledgling universities, like McDonalds franchises) had rented. The hot dogs he had eaten last night – he always ate a lot when he was stressed, but Nunally said he could use some fattening up – were rumbling in his stomach.

Food poisoning, Lelouch thought with an inner groan, could this day get any worse. And then he realized it could when an iron grip settled on his shoulder. "Hey, speech boy," said a voice from behind him.

Lelouch did not turn, he was not sorry for the speech he gave. Perhaps it was not up to the standards expected by the academics, who would have thought he would have something to say about the sciences or something similar, but he had said it through the spoke-piece of his heart and he did not have any regrets.

"That was nice," said the voice, it was the voice of someone used to be in command, with the weight of authority and confidence. Lelouch turned, and examined the man with a critical eye.

The man was neat and tidy, perfectly shaved, well manicured fingernails, and dressed in a posh Britannian suit. A pureblood factionist, Lelouch surmised at once, judging from the wealth of the silk cloth and the jewelry embedded in his gold rolex. Either that or a peacock millionaire who liked to show off, Lelouch thought.

"Can I help you," Lelouch said with a polite and serene expression on his face, while inwardly he was trying to place the man. He seemed familiar, a ghost from time long past, memories that were bad and sad and happy and joyful came at him, memories of a time when he held on to his noble royal heritage with pride, with honor. But he had given it up.

This man… this man… Lelouch swallowed hard, gulping audibly. "Lord Jeremiah Gotfield," Lelouch said, "Your talents in battle are told throughout the world."

The man grinned, nodding, and said, "Would you like a drink? I'm buying."

Lelouch – for a split second – was tempted to say no, to say he wanted to go back to his hotel room, sit alone and look out the window perhaps, staring at the hustle and bustle of the Big Red Apple: New York City. But he had done that last night, felt alone and disconnected with the rest of the world, like he was the last of a dying breed. In a way, he might have been, spouting off about kindness and such. He had done it in the heat of the moment, originally having prepared a perfectly well accepted manuscript of his speech, a close imitation to the speech last year's top student had given, and the year before that, and the year before that.

Deviating from the norm brought attention. In a way Lelouch liked attention, liked to be noticed and recognized, admired for his abilities. But he knew it was dangerous.

And he had done it anyway, for Nunally.

Or maybe for himself. Such contemplating paths led him to a mental state of complete and utter self confusion. And so he accepted Jeremiah's drink and they walked to the man's hotel – a five star, much better than the one Lelouch had rented – and talked about the speech.

Actually, Jeremiah talked and Lelouch listened.

That was all he did that night, never having to use hypnotics and alcohol whatsoever. He did not even possess such drugs, though he knew about them of course, the benzodiazepines like valium and halcyon and who knows what else. When mixed with alcohol they formed an incoherent state of mind, a state where it was next to impossible to lie and hide under ones immense defensive psychological layers.

And Jeremiah used them on his own account, willingly, even offered them to Lelouch.

They were in his hotel room, "Your speech made me think of my mother," Jeremiah slurred, holding a drink of gin in his hand. It was his fifth one that night. Lelouch likewise took a smaller sip, admiring the quality. "She was soft and kind, definitely not someone made for battle, but what woman is, hmm? Well, except for my Lady Empress, Marianne of course. Now there was a beauty, if ever there was the word warrior, it was she."

He felt like laughing. And that is the crux of my problem, Lelouch thought bitterly, I would think you would recognize me, Knight of Marriane, Knight of my mother. But apparently you don't pay much attention to the children - it has always been that way for you.

And Lelouch was fine with that.

There were three bottles of wines on the table, as well as a bottle of strong brandy – the strongest Lelouch ever tried to drink. At nineteen he was of the legal majority and this was the first time he had drunk alcohol legally. He had gambled, he had smoked, he had drank – as a student. Rivalz had been his partner in those illicit activities.

But he had never smoked marijuana before. He heard about it of course, a plant that offered numerous health benefits as well as a 'good time' but was, depending on the strain, addictive if used in excess.

Jeremiah had grinned at him, looked at the boy with a very sly glance, which Lelouch caught of course. He was very observant, much more so than Jeremiah.

The Knight that used to be the Knight of Marianne procured from his pocket a sandwich bag filled with clouds of green plant, sticky and tightly packed. He opened it and dumped it on the glass table. Lelouch leaned back into the leather couch, half amused, half wary.

"Better living through chemistry?" Lelouch asked with a weak smile, "I have never tried this."

Jeremiah laughed a roar of a lion, a laugh filled with danger and adventure, excitement and the smell of sweat and greasy hair, with the stench of booze lingering in the air between them. But the scent of marijuana, its poignant smell as sharp as lemons and as sweet as sugarcanes filled the room. This was potent shit, Lelouch thought, and it appears I am going to get stoned tonight.

"You have never smoked the stuff of the gods? My good friend, you are missing out a lot in life, but not to fear, Jeremiah is here, he'll help you, so say we all!" Jeremiah, eyes sunken and dreamy, a drunkard's pair of eyes, looked at Lelouch and perhaps there was a tinge of recognition, perhaps something else but all of a sudden, he was staring deeply into Lelouch's eyes with perplexity. And then his attention drifted to the drug on the table. He rubbed his hands gleefully and started to untangle the plant, which had been rolled up in a giant ball, like a ball of string. Lelouch though Jeremiah looked like a cat himself, playing with strings, but he was dexteriously separating the marijuana into small and smaller pieces. When they were small enough, Lelouch had already finished his next drink and decided he would have a glass of water. Jeremiah removed from his vest a black wallet, from which he pulled out a pack – a very thin pack – of clear white rolling paper. Lelouch felt like his bladder would explode and excused himself to the bathroom He didn't think Jeremiah noticed. When he returned, he was greeted with the sight of a very happy looking Jeremiah and four perfectly rolled cigarette joints – filled with marijuana instead of tobacco – that were as thick as two of Lelouch's fingers. He marveled at the sight. "Come then, boy," Jeremiah said, "Let's have some fun shall we?"

Lelouch nodded, but with his mouth slightly dry, he said quietly, "I'm a little afraid of this." He was, too, and he was drunk enough to admit it.

Jeremiah chuckled again, but it was a soft one, and one that had a triumphant look to it. He pulled out a bottle of pills from his vest and opened the cap in a show of great strength – for it was childproof and Jeremiah simply ripped it off – dumping three blue rectangular capsules into his hand. He downed them with a gulp of the really strong brandy that had been untouched so far, and handed the rest of the bottle to Lelouch.

He took three as well, but instead of downing them he put them in his pocket when Jeremiah was busy lighting a joint. Lelouch followed suit, taking the lighter from Jeremiah and doing the same.

"Smoke it like a cigarette, or do it like some high school runt who likes to get all the bang he can for his buck, it doesn't matter," Jeremiah said, "We have enough."

His eyes glazed over as he smoked.

Lelouch watched carefully, and then took a tiny drag of the joint himself. The smoke was hot and thick – much more so than normal cigarette smoke – and went down his lungs painfully. He coughed in his hand, continued coughing as he held the joint away from his face. Then, not feeling the slightest change, he bravely toked again, this time hitting the joint hard and deep, letting all the air fill his lungs like a balloon. The smoke burnt and felt painful, throat and lungs protested, but he held it in, imitating Jeremiah who was totally absorbed in the act of the smoke, and slowly breathed it out. Plumes of grey floated to the ceiling.

Lelouch was enjoying this, he felt the same Mozart's twenty fifth buzzing in his brain, "Da da da hum hum ha hum adda humbalagala," Lelouch sang, giggling while he did so.

He dissolved in a fit of laughter, and the small part of his brain that still had some rationality left decided he was intoxicated enough. He left the joint lit, and put it on the glass table so it would not burn a hole in the leather couch. Then he sat back and relaxed. The next two hours passed in a blur. They watched a movie about Robot Aliens and mad Zombie bunnies – or at least that's what Lelouch remembered. The room filled with smoke, but Lelouch didn't mind it anymore, the smoke didn't pain him as before. Jeremiah was silent as well, his eyes puffed and bloodshot red, his mouth curled in what looked like a cruel smirk. They sat there, watched television and then sobriety hit Lelouch faster than it did Jeremiah.

They started talking, random things, Lelouch prodded – he was smart, even while intoxicated – and cajoled Jeremiah to tell him about his job, his career. Jeremiah did so willingly, under the influence of the pills, the alcohol, the marijuana. Lelouch had grabbed a look at the pills – diazepam (valium) and knew Jeremiah would be completely out of it – and probably not remember their conversation at the peak of his intoxication.

"I remember when I first joined the military, at the age of seventeen, my father was a hard man, a businessman who only cared about money but I cared about the glory of Britannia so I joined the military and hoped to be successful there, never did care for school. Dropped out like a hooligan a year before, been caught smoking cigs and drinking by the sidewalk next to the Ben's Goods, a little corner store the hoodlums frequented. I raced around with a bad gang, did things not honourable, not proud of you know, but it was fun, oh damn what fun we had stealing cars and kicking ass. Of course some fun is better than no fun, so it was a good time but I got bored, joined the military school, and learned how to pilot a Knightmare. Being a noble, a pureblood noble, I bypassed the usual rigourous selections for Knightmare pilots, a bunch of bullshit I think, its all in the blood you know, all in the fucking blood." Jeremiah took a big hoot of his joint and continued, telling the tale of his deeds in battle and how he became a Knight of Honour, which was only secondary in importance to the Knight of Rounds, and personally served Lady Marriane throughout her life, only failing in protection once, which occasioned her death, on which account Jeremiah felt highly guilty of and wished most vigourously for forgiveness (not that Lelouch cared). He went on to talk about experiments done by Lloyd Aspund and Bartley, sick experiments of complete depravity. First he was a part of it on accident, having come across the compound on one of his many nightly jaunts in a Knightmare frame when he used to live in the Himalayas – where the base of operations for the scientific investigation of the paranormal such as Code Geass was located. He went in the building and….

ONE

I raced down the snow laden path, riding my Knightmare. The crisp air of the Himalyan mountains surged in me from the ventilation hood of the Knightmare, it was a new edition back then, perhaps the best, perhaps not. Lloyd has been making better ones on the side, but I think he is too distracted by the Code to be making much improvement upon the original Knightmare frames done up by the Ashford family.

I was thinking about Marriane of course, when was that not in my thoughts. Perhaps I was in love with her, it seems so hard to recollect those emotions. I look upon the series of events that occurred on the Himalayan mountains as one looks clinically at a disease, no emotion, just a complete detachment from the case, perhaps a better analogy would be like being a detective, swift and sure and logical, with as little emotional baggage as possible.

Nonetheless, there has to be some, there always is you know, especially in the weird things, the great things, and everything about the Code spoke of greatness. I entered a clearing upon the mountains, somewhat like a cave except it was bowl shaped. I descended into the center of the bowl shaped clearing, the sky overhead rolling with white and gray clouds. It was not snowing then, but it started suddenly, a swift surge of snow and ice fell on my Knightmare. The robot machine was hard to move then, movements which were done within milliseconds on the battle field of the Carribean Islands, where I had come from a weak ago – for I was vacationing in the Himalayas, at a very good hotel spa with an indoor pool that was hot hot hot – but the movements here in this cold ascent of the earth was as slow as a turtle, and perhaps as useful. The center of the bowl shaped formation was strange, perhaps, because there existed in the center three pillars as high as my waist and made of the blackest metal, some type I had not seen before. It was arranged in a triangular geometry and was spacious enough to accomadate my Kngihtmare but not much else. I stood within the triangle, looking around and wondering.

Aliens were always a fascination of mine and this place seemed so strange, so alienic, I remember the thought racing through my head like a missile, a pounding revelation. This is… this is where humanity will begin its evolution. I don't think my guess was too far off, because what came scared me, scared Jeremiah Gotfield, the bravest warrior of Brittannia!

My Knightmare stopped working. There was nothing on this earth that could do that, except perhaps one of those Geflon restrictor things but those are so rare, and the mechanism is just so unique so I knew it couldn't be that. I thought it was something… something…" Jeremiah stopped and looked out the window, and then scratched his nose and looked at Lelouch with glazed eyes.

He's drugged, Lelouch thought in satisfaction, completely out of it. He leaned back and took a drink of water, and then stared at the joint of marijuana that was burning yet on the table. He picked it up gingerly, and then took a slightly smaller deep inhalation of the burnt plant. It filled his head with an explosion of pleasure, not intense, not dull either, but a certain level of enjoyment arose from Lelouch and he smiled lazily, his eyes as puffed up as cottonballs. "Tell me more," Lelouch said, "Tell me everything about your experience in the Himalayas," he said again as he took another hoot of the joint. The smell was like heaven, and the burning sensation when he inhaled had gone, perhaps he was used to it already. Later when he went back to the hotel room and packed up for his flight back to Area 11, he would look at the three pills he had gotten from Jeremiah and wonder if he should take them. Then he would put them in a plastic sandwich bag similar to the one Jeremiah had used to store the marijuana and he would save it for a rainy day. He would use it the day Oghi died, and he would use another one on the day he would meet the Black Knights and challenge them, perhaps, as it would determine whether he would live or die, whether the Black Knights wanted revenge. He would have one more pill remaining, a tiny little valium left that would calm him down and fill him with a certain benign euphoria, and he would wait for it, and one day when he would need it he would take it. That day would perhaps be the worst day of his life, not because of the pill – the pill was fine, but because of Tamaki and his Geass.

"The mountains are so cold," Jeremiah whispered, his voice as soft as the wind, "So very cold. I might have been shivering if not for the Knightmare heating system, but even then I could feel the chill as I sat inside my Knightmare frame, wondering what would happen to me. The Knightmare had stopped working but the heating system still functioned. I didn't dare go out of course, if I did I would freeze perhaps instantly and I was in my pajamas. The heating system runs on batteries, not the same one that powers the main Knightmare system, but a different generator, one of those lead zinc car batteries. It seemed that whatever stopped my Knightmare frame from working did not stop the car battery that powered the heat. That was another clue it was not one of those Glefjon – Glefgon… whatever, those things that we have, you know?"

Lelouch nodded. He knew.

"So I was waiting there, perhaps counting down in my head, how many hours of heat would I have left? Then I took out my mints, wishing I had a bottle of brandy to keep me warm, or warmer, but I didn't, driving under the influence is dangerous, doubly so when operating a Knightmare. Instructors at the Piloting Academy had drummed it through our skulls after all, and although I might not have made the qualifications that other Pilots had, I was no fool. I graduated best in my class by the way, in the Piloting Academy, so I know how to fight good in a Knightmare. But you don't understand, Le- Lelub," Jeremiah frowned, "Did I get your name right? Lelub, correct?"

Lelouch nodded, "Yes, please go on, I am very interested in your tale, and I will hear it well, if you don't mind, but if you want to take a break that's fine with me too." Lelouch was very content and relaxed, perhaps the most relaxed he had been in his life, with the alcohol causing his dopamine receptors to go bang bang and the weed causing his brain to go zoom zoom. He felt wonderful.

"As I waited there, I thought to myself, what if I used a gun to destroy one of those metal beams that held the triangle together, would it break the force field that stopped my Knightmare from working? I hunted around in the dashboard of my Knightmare, my heart pounding in my chest and feeling afraid. I have never felt afraid in the heat of battle, but then there I felt scared, really scared because I just didn't know what was going on. A great scholar once said, the unknown scares us the most, and I think he was right. I think he was very much right." Jeremiah paused to drink another shot of brandy and continued, almost hurriedly. He was anxious even then despite the drugs, Lelouch could tell from the way he spoke.

"I thought to myself okay, I have a gun right here in the dashboard. Is it loaded with an electric battery? Yes it was, would it work however? If I opened the Knightmare frame window hatch, then I wouldn't be able to close it again, that was the price to pay. Opening it was a mechanical thing, closing was a sakuradite sourced operation, every engineer and pilot worth his salt knows that. I thought to myself, if this gun doesn't work, doesn't destroy the metal beam, I'm screwed. But I risked it anyways, I have always hated being helpless and still, always!"

Jeremiah stamped the joint underneath his shoes and stood up, went to the TV screen and kicked it in rage. "I opened the hatch, shot the gun at one of those metal beams and bang, nothing happened! Nothing!"

Jeremiah looked at Lelouch with wild eyes. "The gun didn't work, nothing at all. I stood there, looking like a fool, freezing in my pajamas for god knows how long. I shouted for help, nobody came, even though I bet Lloyd heard my call. Then walking around in my deerskin boats, I went up a bit, but the ice there was so slippery I couldn't get out of the bowl formation. So I was stuck. I tried knocking down those metal beams but it didn't help. At last I got an idea, what if I pushed the Knightmare frame away from the triangular formation? Then I could operate it again.

"The only thing that kept me going was my mints, I gobbled up the whole packet, I had left my hotel spa with a fully packed packet of mints and I just gobbled them up, chewed like hell. It was cold and made my nostrils flare up but it kept me focused, just chewing on those mints like my life depended on it. I pushed the Knightmare, pushed and pushed, and finally brought it out of the triangular formation. Then when I went inside and latched up the hatch again, I was shot down.

"Shot! Shot by three Knightmares surrounding me, legs and hands, and nothing else. My Knightmare frame was a pile of junk after the shooting and I wasn't weapon ready. My Knightmare was unequipped because I had no idea I would be in a fight, usually I keep it minimally equipped with weapons but in the Himalayas they caught me unprepared and trashed my Knightmare. This was the frame that protected Marianne! That fought in a hundred battles for Britannia! And they shot it down without mercy, Britannians themselves. The pilots there opened their own hatches, and walked out dressed in these yellow leather or plastic suits, maybe velcro, like the suits the chemists wear when walking into an unsafe zone. They had glass helmets and oxygen tanks and everything, and they dragged me out of the hatch and into their lair. On one of the metal beams there was a button, which they pushed. The triangular formation was actually an elevator, can you imagine it? A bowl and a triangle and an elevator inside the bowl. Who but a crack pot like Lloyd could think of such a thing?" Jeremiah went back to the couch and sat back. Lelouch looked at him blandly.

Jeremiah was glaring a hole at the bottle of brandy sitting on the table. He grabbed it and gulped it rapidly.

"The elevator ride was dark and all of the men had the butts of their rifles pointed at me, digging into my skin. They would shoot me if I dared to move an inch, although they spoke not a word the threat was there nonetheless. I arrived at the beginning of a very big room filled with computers, and in the center of the room was a glass cage filled with liquid. Inside the cage… inside was a person, a person who I had known before."

Jeremiah bowed down his head and looked at his hands, perhaps in shame. He turned to Lelouch and said with a miserable look on his face, "It was Lady Marianne."

Lelouch gasped, all the effects of the drug rapidly cleared, his mind became as sharp as a sword and his heart raced in his chest.

Outwardly he appeared calm and slightly interested. "Do go on, if you please."

Jeremiah nodded, "They were doing experiments on her. She was already dead but they were experimenting on her body, she was completely naked in the tank but they had injected several toxic radioactive liquids in her body, and most especially a potion that Lloyd called the 'Geass Potion.' He explained it all to me, as if we were having tea. I would have killed him but… but I was scared."

"Geass?" Lelouch said, "Explain." His voice had command. Jeremiah looked up in drunken surprise, but did so.

What Jeremiah said chilled Lelouch's blood, and brought back haunted memories.

As well as a tiny spark of ambition that roared into a blazing fury of steel and hardness.

Code Geass.

He would find out more.

0000000

AN: _Hey guys, just checking in with another chappie for you. I wish I had some more reviews that would really make my day. This chapter has been a bit weird, because it contains a lot of heavy shocks, eh, especially the last part. This is an epic series, I think, at least going to be a few more chapters to go but be warned, this story is not for the weak hearted. What follows will contain merciless warfare, character deaths, multiple twists and turns, surprises and puzzling shocks, as well as gruesome experimentation in the name of scientific progress. This is… BRITANNIA!_

Let's have some reviews people! Everybody: dance on the review button, and sing your OPINIONS on the keyboard with the harmonic instruments that are your fingers. I want praise! I want criticism! Hate and Flames and Responses! I want… R.E.V.I.E.W.S!!


	4. Chapter 4: The Assassin

Chapter Four: The Asssassin

At first Julius Grechen, father of Robert Grechen and an outstanding lawyer, didn't quite know where to find a hitman for Mr. Archebello. He did not even know the target, just the fact that he needed a hitman, and to find a hitman that would do an international kill… well that was tough, but life was tough and he was going bankrupt. His businesses had lost a lot of money due to the fuckin' economy, those damn EU jerks taking all the money with their damn sakuradite, and what did Britannia have? A bunch of no good Areas, that didn't incur much profit, on the contrary the military expenditure to fight to keep those Areas, as well as defend its increasingly large borders from outside forces like the E.U, ARDER (those damn niggers, Julius would yell out sometimes at the dinner table), China (damn chinks was another one of his favorite phrases), and who could forget, the Japanese rebellion that was gaining ground (Damn punks! He would yell at dinner, punk being one of his favorite words when he couldn't think of a racial slur, or sometimes he would say those damn Japanese nigger-chink punks, mix and match was a good lawyer trick and he knew all the tricks o' the trade because he was a damn good lawyer, son, and so what if he was gong bankrupt, everybody hit rough patches, didn't they?).

"Can you believe we lost almost a HUNDRED knightmares to those terrorists?" Julius exclaimed noisily as he slurped his noodles. It was lunch time and his wife made delicious food. He looked at her somewhat endearingly, she had brown her and a pale boney face but nonetheless she was quite beautiful dressed in tight silk pants and a loose blouse that was open at the top, showing hints of cleavage. All in all, Julius considered himself a pretty lucky man – his wife of thirty five was still a good lay. He had married well, money and beauty. "This is just preposterous," he continued, glaring at the newspaper. He ripped it up and threw it in the trash basket fifteen meters away, and it missed spectacularly.

"What do you think about this mess, honey?" He asked her, "Hmm, my little Mary?"

They were alone in the kitchen and both knew what that meant: sexy time. Robert was away, he had gone to a conference in New York – the city of conferences, one could say – about some geeky science thing. Julius had wanted his son to follow his footsteps, become a slimy (and rich) lawyer just like him but things don't go well all the time, do they? No sir, they don't. He had his wife though and he had the house to himself, so maybe sometimes they did go well, and if he could find some punk willing to kill another punk for cheap, he could make a tidy profit from Mr. Archebello, the cheap bastard. Not this time though. Thirty fucking thousand EU dollars! That was a fortune!

"I honestly can't say," Mary Grechen said, "I mean I sympathize with the terrorists of course, it was their land we conquered, and they certainly did get a big bounty of Knightmare frames but at the same time I can't see what good it will do. They'll never win against Britannia, never in a million years."

"Sympathizing with the terrorists?" Julius said, snorting with barely suppressed laughter. "Its your English degree talking, they always turn out sissies, no offence, I mean."

"None taken," Mary said, smiling the political smile that kept marriages happy and prosperous, and Julius sometimes knew that smile, sometimes he did not know that smile, depending on the situation at hand. Right now he knew that smile, and that look in her eye. It meant she was annoyed, and he would have to work extra hard to rectify that. So he pushed his noodles away – Mary was already done her lunch, bless her boney heart – and he got up to his feet with a grunt of exertion and took her by the shoulders, carried her as she laughed and screamed good naturedly to be put down, into the big bedroom at the end of the hall. They lived in a big house, the good kind, the rich kind, where good people lived, the rich good people. He threw her on the bed as she giggled like a school girl – and he certainly remembered those wild days – and started undressing her white blouse, revealing a pair of rather lovely breasts, if Julius said so himself. Nothing to show his buddies about – not that he would, unless they offered him a bit of cash for it – but really good nonetheless, what he called the skinny tits.

After a satisfying afternoon that ended in an evening of wine and cheese tasting at a nearby convention for wine and cheese, Julius and Mary went to a little restaurant by a river, a glazed river of blue and green murk but beautiful all the same. They had a view of the river in front of them, where little brown boats went down it, with couples sailing on them, and beyond the river, much a way beyond, there were three mountains, the Triplet Mountains as it was called in this local area. They had pizza at the restaurant, with extra cheese and extra beef (Mary, bless her boney heart, had a vegetarian skimpy delight) and drank cold sodas. Mary didn't let him have beer anymore, said it was bad for his heart and his cholesterol was too high. He said (in his mind, not aloud) fuck the cholesterol, and drank in his office, and smoked sometimes too but the smell was rather hard to get rid of, so he only did it when he was desperate or really stressed.

They had a boat ride after dinner, hired a strapping young lad – that Mary laid her eyes on more than once, much to Julius's annoyance – to row it down the river. They kissed, it was wonderful, the perfect life.

The only cherry on top he could add was to find a goddamn hitman to kill some punk in (was it Area 11, Mr. Archebello had said? Julius didn't remember, but Mr. Archebello had called him twice over the past three months that all ended in the same nasal yell: 'KILL THAT BOY!') Area 11. Preferably cheap. But cheap hitmen aren't good hitman, not necessarily.

Fuck.

Where the hell am I going to find a guy willing to kill for money? He thought morosely and it totally ruined his boat ride.

Zero.

Man of Strategy.

Man of Miracles.

He went to the grocery store and bought a pack of cigarretes and a lighter. Lit one up and smoked it in the breeze of the hotel's front, away from the window of his room. Sure he knew Nunally was blind, but it didn't feel right doing the dirty (not the other dirty where two people scrambled all over each other, but this dirty – the dirty of the cigarette) in Nunally's sightline.

He thought about his newest plans. He had acquired several new Knightmare frames. He would put them to good use. First he would need funds to fix 'em up, a good fixer upper, as a real estate agent would say. Definitely has potential. Yes that was good. Nicotine working his brain into relaxed mode – good good, perfectly good. He thought: If I get more pilots, and get the Knightmares fixed, we'd have a real army, then I'd just go bang bang on Clovis, and kill them Britannians, take over Japan. Zero. King of Japan. It had a ring to it, not as good as Zero. King of the World. But that was just too unrealistic. He was a science dude, and scientific people like him loved realism, which was why Lelouch decided he would not be King of the World until he had first been King of Japan first.

Realism at its finest.

He loved this, goddamn he loved it, smoking his way to success and death. Dig an early grave, yessir. He took in a deep drag, and let the dirty smoke – wasn't it always dirty, the smell, the stink, the aroma – drift from his mouth.

It was a good day. The sun was shining down on his face, and last night was perfect, relaxing, a dinner date with Kallen, Nunally, and Shirley. He knew Kallen suspected something – she might not know it herself, not on the superficial layers anyways, but deep down she suspected, perhaps she even knew but was too scared to let herself know it, let herself believe her hero (her Zero) was a Britannian, let herself believe he could consider torture (and he did consider it) or be able to kill Oghi (orchestrate his death, which he did by the by, with pleasure, yessir, that's what you get for questioning my authority, bitch).

Kallen was different. She was beautiful and Lelouch wanted to get into her pants.

He froze.

What did his mind say? No way, no fucking way, best not to mix business with pleasure, and military romance never went well with the superiors.

Well wasn't he the superior, the big boss, the King (King Kong, version 99.8, the movie from last night, about the giant ape who went rabid and used alien technology he found in the Random Forest Of Doom to destroy the world, damn that was a good movie, especially since he was squeezed between the two ladies, arms around their shoulders like a chubby native chief with his harem), was he not the leader?

Or was he just a prince?

And didn't he like Shirley too? Goddamn, yes he did, both girls were beautiful, hot, intelligent, perfect for Lelouch.

And he wanted both of them, the horror, the polygamy of it! Ah well, such was life, another drag on the half burnt cigarette told him that life was good, perfectly good, not perfectly perfect, but good enough, yessir.

Alright, enough goofing off, let's get down to business, Zero time, Lelouch thought as he picked up his cell phone and called Sayachi. She was good, professional, knew what to do, she was a girl with a brain – or was it a brain with a girl – and she could do things, amazing things, with a pencil and a calculator. Which was why Lelouch put her in charge of accounting, Tamaki was no good, skimping on the family funds, dipping his hands in the honey pot. They had to feed the goddamn bear, not themselves! And the bear was hungry because he was a rebellious bear and wanted Britannia out of Area 11.

Bears.

Britannia.

Rebellion.

Damn, I must be going crazy, Lelouch thought. He wasn't going crazy though, it was just the nicotine, and he was always sensitive to it. It stimulated him, made his heart race, and made everything funny and bright. Not like marijuana, not like alcohol. This stuff was kind of like coffee.

Yum, coffee. He walked down to the coffee shop a block away and bought himself a cup of Black Joe, the best coffee in town and the cheapest too, which was what really mattered. He was short on money now, needed possibly two hundred grand to fix up those Knightmares.

Maybe I can just kidnap some engineers, he thought. Then decided it wouldn't work. They'd probably sabotage my Knightmares and everything would go down the drain. No, I'll have to hire out, maybe from India. What was her name, Rakshita? Nah, too high class, same league as Lloyd – fucking Geass – Asplund.

He stopped, coffee in one hand, his third cigarette in the other. "My mother," he whispered to the big blue sky, "You'll pay."

"Hey kid, get outta my way!" snarled a burly man with a beard.

"Sorry, mister," Lelouch said with a half smile, eyes as cold as hell frozen in the freezer.

Maybe it was finally time to pay a visit to Lloyd, but he was scared, he didn't want to be recognized. They were doing experiments on his mother, so he would have all the files, all the info, and would recognize Lelouch right away. Bang, hey look everybody I just found the lost Prince and Princess of Britannia while I was working on my newest Knightmare and experimenting on 'The Flash' Lady Marriane on the side, yes, give me another nobel prize please, another Emperor's Finest reward, oh yes, why not, because I'm the goddamn Earl of Pudding, you know.

But that would come in due time, first… the meeting with the Black Knights. He dialed the number he had memorized and the phone rang twice before Sayachi picked up, her nasally overtone very real and very delightful in a vague sort of way, as if meeting an old friend. "Sayachi," he said, "This is Zero. Call a meeting at the Chicken, right away."

She would know what to do, she always did her part – called the meeting, rang the bell, let everyone know it was time for dinner or whatever damn code words the terrorists used. Everyone would come, their identities solid as they would make some silly excuse that everyone would believe – I feel like I am in a bad mood – those stupid people.

Oh yes, the bad mood was coming now, right after he smoked ciggies he would get these terrible bad moods of anger and heightened stress. He blamed it on the nicotine crash and knew he had to eat something right away or suffer being pissed and angry all day. Next to the coffee shop was a white billboard with capital block letters in bold, "Chicken Burger Delight."

He went there because it reminded him of the Chicken, and the Chicken reminded him of that mysterious oriental quote he never quite understood, "Always without desire we must be found…" he whispered under his breath, walking underneath the sign and into a clean albeit underfurnished restaurant, with a counter top of glass where a man stood behind it.

Lelouch did a double take. It was the same man who he had given the money to, way back when, fifteen thousand dollars, to the terrorists to track down their cell, to get the meeting with Zero. It was Bayochara… no that wasn't right, Bicara… hmm perhaps. He had forgotten the name. But he had not forgotten the face.

"Hello," he said, walking up to the counter. He looked at the menu and ordered a chicken burger, with fries and a glass of water, knowing he was dehydrated.

And then he would order a cab outside to drive to the ghetto, about a mile from the Chicken Billboard Warehouse, from whence he would change into his outfit and drive a car parked outside a tiny apartment he had bought to the warehouse, and enter… as a new man, as Zero.

His outfit was simply made, black cape and black helmet masking his features, with leather boots of the finest quality. He had taken great pains to make sure it was Japanese made, and the tiny print of one of Japan's top companies, HUGS, was written finely on the bottom border of the boots.

The details mattered, they mattered a lot so Lelouch did his best to make sure he got the tiny things correct, because they all added to the overall impression. "Zero, the masked hero, ready to liberate Japan of Britannia's tyranny," he said under his breath as he drove a beat up blue chevvy to the warehouse. He always made sure to arrive five minutes early, no more, no less. He parked the car some distance away, not a lot because the area was abandoned but there might be some people, strangers, out there on the streets and if they looked at some dude in a weird get up they might call the police.

And the police know Zero, they know the terrorist leader and hunt for him even now, even though I have not revealed myself to the public in anyway. He thought he should, but he was a bit frightened of the public, in all honesty – he did not have supernatural powers, did not have the power to create miracles and to portray himself as a Man of Miracles like Todouh was just asking for pain. But to show them just an ordinary guy dressed up like a loon would be asking for mockery. No, none could work. Only him, only Lelouch would know the true face of Zero – Lelouch. And only his people would Zero reveal himself to, mask and get up and all.

He shook his head as a headache approached. He could feel the dull throb of the pain – he definitely did not feel in top shape, but that didn't stop him in any way as he parked his car in front of the warehouse, turned off the engine and sat there in silence, staring at the steel wall in front of him – the back of the warehouse. "Oghi," he said aloud, as if in remembrance. He had killed, perhaps not by hand, but by mind and somehow that made it worse. He looked at his hands, his bloody and guilty hands, which had not pulled the trigger but had directed the gun. He had ordered Oghi to die, ordered him to kill himself for the sake of a single plan, and he did it – unknowingly.

He got out of the car, and walked to the front of the warehouse, his boots making thunk thunk noises with the gravel. He looked at the sky and then back at his hands, blue sky, red bloody hands. The red was not there except in his mind, and his mind showed it as vividly as the blue sky that circled overhead like a brilliant shining dome. Entering the warehouse, he could not face the gaze of the multitude of Black Knights that stood there, lined in perfect uniform order like pieces of dominoes. He forced himself to, thought of Nunally and forced himself to walk, each footstep weighing a ton, each step breaking his heart once more. Oghi's death was necessary, he told himself, he challenged me, and I needed a sacrifice. It fits, it was logical, perfect.

But it wasn't perfect, how could death be perfect except as a natural outcome of a hale and hearty old age? This was war, people got hurt, he told himself.

But what gives me the right to hurt others?

He had no answer for that. He stood in front of them in an uncomfortable silence, perhaps they could feel it. Maybe they will abandon me, that will serve them best, he thought, then they wouldn't be used like pieces on a chess board, willy nilly sacrifices of the pawn to trap the king.

It was necessary. Britannia was evil and it had to fall. They killed his mother – were doing experiments on her dead body. It angered him so much that if he let even a tiny iota show he thought he might explode. So he held it all inside him, repressed in a deep and dark corner at the center of his heart, right next to his love for Nunally. It was strange and beautiful, hate and love intermingled forming the iron motivation and willpower that kept him going, that kept the Black Knights going.

"We need money," he proclaimed aloud, "The expenses to make the Knightmares we acquired war ready needs to be met, and soon. There is no time!"

He held out his hand, and from within the cloth that covered his wrist he let slip a small piece of paper, a map. He held it out to them and exclaimed, "Do you not see? Britannia is growing! It is growing more powerful each and every day we sit and rest on our laurels and do nothing to stop it. Do you think you can just wait for someone else to come along and defeat Britannia for us? No, it has to be us, it has to be the Black Knights!"

"What do you suggest we do?" Kallen asked, her eyes slightly angry, "We're not afraid to fight, we've been fighting for a long time."

"Yes, yes you have, and it has not been enough, not now, not ever, not until we hit them strategically where it hurts the most. Their money, that's where it hurts them, that's where they will feel the pain and come hunting for our blood." Lelouch felt his heart racing. He was finally getting in the mood. He was Zero. Rebel leader, masked bandit, the Robin Hood of the modern age. Come and get us, Britannia, before I take you in my bare hands and crush you to pieces.

He laughed, a cold and heartless chuckle, "Tell me, my friends, have you ever heard of Sir Arthur Pingberry, of the Knights of the Round Table?"

"What the hell is all this about?" said a man wearing a dark expression on his face like it was the latest fashion. "We don't need a history lesson, we need to get our Knightmares and fight Britannia, make them surrender and give back Japan."

"They will not surrender Japan, sooner they will surrender themselves," Lelouch said, "Because to them Japan is theirs now, and to surrender a part of theirs is to surrender the whole. But we need money, as I have said and I have a cunning plan to get it."

Zero was an enigma, mask et all, and they knew it and felt his charisma, his spirit. It was his greatest weapon, perhaps even better than his mind. Schniezel had brains, and so did Cornelia and many others

(that fool, Lloyd!) so the mind was nothing special in the wide scheme of things.

He continued his tale, "Sir Arthur Pingberry owned a great big pile of land, a pile of vineyards actually and he made a lot of money off it, but he also liked to gamble and got into a debt with the King. Do you know what he did?"

Kallen gave a howl of boredom, "Come on, Zero, just tell us," she said when the silence ran on.

"Very well," Lelouch said as coldly as possible, so they could hear the smirk in his voice. "He robbed the Bank of Britannia blind. He got caught and beheaded of course, but that's just circumstantial, I'm sure, as he also carried on a secret affair with the Queen that ended in a spectacularly embarrassing manner." 

Zero raised his hand, "But that is a story for another day. The story for today is simple; we shall rob ten banks in a row, over the span of twenty four hours. Everybody, get your Knightmares and meet me in thirty minutes at coordinates 44.4, 88.7 degrees. We have only a small time window available before Prince Clovis receives reinforcements from North Britannia's Pureblood League."

They scattered like cockroaches and the sight of it made the headache go away like a charm.

Lelouch could count on his fingers the number of plans that were outrageous successes and the capture of the Britannian Knightmares were definately one of the top ones. He looked at his troops behind him and gazed at them with a semblance of pride as they approached the first bank in a whole list - a whole slew of banks that were meant to be robbed, that they would rob. "It is a live and let live world, except for those who rule with the iron fist, the fox and the hound and the chicken and the frog," said Sayachi.

Lelouch turned to her, seeing her for perhaps the first time - no, not the first time, but in a different way, a unique way, because he had thought of her as just another girl to be written off as a little rebel child, and nothing important. He thought of her the way he thought of Oghi, or any other Black Knight, as a tool, but when a tool has a personality, even a quirky one, it made them so much more... He was discovering something about chess and life, and a whole new dimension had opened up for him. But he chased the distractions away from his mind and forced himself to concentrate at the task at hand.

The bank had a double glass panel for its door, one that Lelouch remembered when he had scouted it a few days ago as having tiny microcameras hidden in the framework itself, camaflouged within the glass. It was a work of genius, a work of Lloyd. Just thinking about the scientist made his blood boil, made him want to forget the plan and take his Knightmare for a little run, put out a couple bullet holes in the glass with the Knightmare Machine Gun.

"Q1"- his queen, Kallen, the best pilot the Black Knights had was a very important piece of the puzzle here -"Go left, and aim at a thirty degree angle with your medium range missile canon, attack the ceiling."

As she proceeded to do so, Lelouch took a moment to admire the sunny day as well as the many numerous people out and about, walking around perhaps like clowns, he thought, complete fools, who had no idea what is about to happen, what will happen should they not leave and never come back. But they deserve it for taking over Japan like that, for being tyrants.

Am I not a tyrant? Did I not do wrong by Oghi?

Yes, for a good cause.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions –

I am good! I am righteous!

The thought scared him that he wasn't, because lying to himself had never been an agreed part of the sacrifices he had allocated to the plan, to the way of things that he would task to being Zero.

"K8, K9, K10, follow Q1 and seal her retreat of the police force. The rest of you, follow me!"

They exploded through the glass of the bank's giant double doors, letting shards fall to the floor and onto some of the customers waiting in line. Pointing his gun at the clerk he said in his microphone, "All your money, now!"

His voice amplified and resonated by machines seemed even to him an alien and frightening thing, but it was okay, everything was okay because he was doing this out of good intentions – hell and saints and angels too, lets join in and dance, the night is young.

The night wasn't young, nothing had youth, Lelouch felt old before his time. He crouched to his knees, the Knightmare following his body movements like a puppet, and sitting inside the cockpit, staring at the clerk's pretty brown eyes wide with fear was a truly revealing thing.

He stared into the mirror of her eyes and it reflected his soul.

He gasped, wondered if he was going insane as a security officer fired gun shots at his Knightmare. K3 killed him in a burst of fire.

"Put the money out front, now, or else your life is forfeit," he said in his best commanding tone. It worked, they jumped to it like rabbits and a huge pile of cash lay ready within a minute.

"K1, have you planted the bomb?" he said in his secure line, knowing perfectly well that the money in front of him was only a mere tenth of what lay in the bank's vaults.

"Yes sir," K1 said, a loyal and obedient soldier who was slightly dumb, which suited Lelouch perfectly. His name was Obama Wilson. "Kallen's shot opened the back gate and allowed us to enter the vaults. Shall we open them with the bombs?"

"Yes," Lelouch said.

Explosions.

Smoke.

Fire.

Screams.

A few minutes later the contnts of the vaults were emptied and the cockpits of the Black Knights overflowed with jewelry, gold and silver coins and hard cash – green notes.

Perfect as planned.

"Holy shit there's so much," gasped Kallen.

"Not enough," Lelouch grunted, swirving his Knightmare to hit an incoming police Knightmare frame charging into view. His Knightmare knee cap touched the police machine's head – gone in a move of impossible aerobics governed through the use of computational instruction. Perfect and more perfect, could this day be any less perfect?

Suddenly, approaching from the left corner of the arena (said a little voice that sounded like the referee in a wrestler tv show) came a whole band of Police Knightmares, firing with everything they had.

"The megabomb, explode it to cover our retreat." The bomb had been planted twenty meters into their retreating path. They ran over it, Lelouch sweating with tension as he wondered if his plan would work. He trod over the bomb, and holding the launch key in his computer, he set it to go off in 5… 4…. 3… 2… 1…

The band of police were at the right place at the right time, chasing after them like dogs.

Boom!

Explosion. Smoke. Fire. Screams.

The same old slew, as if a broken tape went on repeat mode. It annoyed Lelouch to no end, a part of him, the part that Nunally knew well, screamed in its own pain.

The pain of a conscience twisted by the will of a dictator.

Lelouch felt sad. His success made him happy.

But he still felt sad. Perhaps it was the smoke that filtered in his air vent, even though his air conditioning pumped full blast to ward off the heat of the hot day.

Perhaps it was the heat of the fire. Or the screams of burning victims, the sirens of the police, ambulance, fire brigade…

Somebody call 911, Lelouch thought to himself, knowing the cameras had already called for government aid. The Megabomb covered their retreat, a plume of mushroom shaped fire and smoke blocking access to remaining pursuers.

He turned to his left, pivoted to the right and raced ownward, followed by more than fifty fully working Knightmares piloted by oh so loyal (just like Oghi, says the conscience within) Black Knights spread out in an area of twenty acres.

The paint jobs done on their knightmares camaflouged them with the police force.

It was brilliant. Oh so Zero.

The man without a name, the name without a face, and the face without a person.

He was Lelouch vi Britannia, the exiled prince.

"His name is Zero," he whispered and he knew in his heart that it was time to reveal himself to the public.

It was time to die!

Time to fight for freedom or die fighting for freedom! He would use this thought in his speech later in the day after three subsequent successes, the last attempt ending in a spectacular failure as they were ambushed by over forty squadrons of police knightmares.

They got away with a lot of money, and twenty Knightmares. Lelouch wasn't sure if this was a loss or a gain, but the money helped rebuild Knightmares, didn't revive dead pilots.

Just the way of the world, the way of the rebel, those who die, die for freedom, those who live, live to become the tyrants they fought against.

Zero was already a tyrant. He wondered if others – Black Knights – would follow his footsteps, and become tainted like him.

You're responsible if they do.

He knew it was so, yet he would not stop, could not stop. The iron resolve that would – and could – shape the world made him do things, continue on his path, on his track – tactical planning versus strategic genius would the choice arise. He would choose strategy and be glorified as a brilliant general.

And his insides would churn with the guilt of a thousand thousand deaths on his hand. And more to follow.

This, the world would soon come to know.

The assassin Julius Grechen hired came to be known as Utuz. He lived in a shack by the river. His beard was long and grey, he had the body of a muscular twenty year old. He was also twenty years older than Grechen himself. The similarities ended and the differences began all too suddenly when Grechen was offered a cup of tea as he entered Utuz's hut.

The hut was small, cramped with books of all varities. Mostly they were books on cooking. He asked Utuz if he were a cook, and did not get an answer. Right, stupid question then. He looked at the man with a skeptical gaze, wondered if the old geezer – who was as ripped as a wrestler – could pull it off.

The internet could find the most unique of people

Minutes passed in silence as they drank tea together by the patio overlooking the river. The sunlight added heat to his already flushed face.

Utuz looked to be in his eighties, but Grechen couldn't really tell, he was a lawyer not a biolgist. "We have agreed on the press over the telephone," Julius Grechen said in a clear and loud voice as he hoped to mask the nervousness he felt within his breast. But he thought the piercing black eyes of Utuz the Assassin could see through him and so he felt terrified. He thought he hid it well. Later when he would return home, half drunk and wounded from a bar fight, he would curse Mr. Archebello for sending him to do the dirty work and vow never to take another job from him again. Right now, he thought he would be lucky to get back alive. The skeptical gaze ended when the hardness of Utuz met his will and evaporated it like fire against a tiny cup of water. He was scared and he would not admit it but he hoped the man knew the business, how it was done, and wouldn't ask too much.

"Ten thousand extra," Utuz said gruffly, "take it or leave it."

"Stop wasting my time!" Grechen yelled, "You think you can just demand anything? you are nothing more than a gangster boy, a little hit man for us to send and direct as we will. A hammer, a tool. Do not presume much, Utuz."

Utuz snorted, "Then take your ass out, you filthy cheap lawyer."

"Alright fine, have the extra money," Grechen said, grumbling to himself as he removed his wallet, "Two thousand, and no more."

"I said ten!"

"Five."

"Nine thousand and eight hundred dollars."

"Are you insane? You are, aren't you, what are you going to use all that money for anyways, collect some more cooking books?"

"Yes, perhaps, none of your business anyhow, I'll take five so get out," Utuz exclaimed angrily. "You better not cheat me, you hear?"

"Cash upfront," Julius Grechen agreed reluctantly, "Like we said before." He took out a fat wad of green notes wrapped in a thin red rubber band and slammed it on the table. He counted the extra five grand from his own wallet, buldging with notes itself.

"The target is..."

"I know who the target is," Utuz said patiently, "Mr. Archebello gave me the information."

"And money?" prompted Grechen.

"None of your business, fatso lawyer. Now get the hell out of here before I throw you out with my big muscular arms."

Grechen raised his eyes in disgust and surprise, "What?"

"GET OUT!" Utuz yelled, eyes flashing with hate and absolute loathing, etched on his face like stone etched into stone in the great art museum of Britannia.

"I'm leaving."

He left, got drunk, bar fight, home.

"Fuck Archebello!" He exclaimed and proceeded to have hot wild sex with Mary. The next morning he would swear the dog joined in as well, and only remember later on when He was on the aeroplane to Area 11 that they didn't have a dog.

The night was cold and frigid, but still perfect for fucking and in his drunken haze he did not notice the red beeping of the telephone, signifying a message had been left for him by Mr. Archebello.

Robert Grechen returned to his house three days later after Utuz had been hired. He went in the door and looked at the message on the phone, heard it – everyone else was away on a business trip to Japan (area 11 but he liked to call it as it should be) of all places so he had the house to himself. He let the message play out as he made himself some cheerios and milk cereal and wandered into the living room to relax, watch some TV.

The message started to repeat in an old and archaic voice, the voice of the English gentlemen he sometimes saw in black and white movies. It was the voice of authority, albeit an ancient authority: "Julius, the implementation is in place, the weapon is at Number Eight's, and the assassin is ready to take down Lelouch Lamperouge. We need the assassin to be removed as well, so as to secure the immunity of our implication in this event. Do you understand the meaning of assassin kills assassin, Mr. Grechen? It is the age old profession of assassins to kill amongst themselves – and the reason for their high death rates. I have an individual in mind who specializes in this sort of occupation, so I shall give him a call after operation elimination Lelouch is completed."

Robert heard this frozen in a stiffness, a certain element of terror that seemed to skyrocket up his spine, and boil his stomach in an attack of sheer monumental anxiety. His friend, Lelouch, was apparently being the target of an assassination attempt according to the message on the telephone. Robert did not know who the speaker was, but knew that his friend was in trouble and his father was an accomplice of the source of the trouble. For a moment his loyalty wavered between that of family and friend, but he fell back on his morals – the ones his mother had taught him, for his father showed him only the lawyer way, mainly the lack of morals – and removed his black cellular telephone from the pocket of his green blazer, dialed Lelouch's number from his powerful memory (the number was connected in his mind to certain visualization ques: fish, hook, bottle of milk, and dictionary) and waited, each ringing noise bringing another bolt of terror, sweat dripping down his face from the summer heat as well as the anxiety he was feeling.

Killing people was illegal for gods sakes!

But that was the least of his worries: his father was an accomplice!

And now… he was turning his back on family, seeking out refuge in morality and ethics of which he had always received – and assumed – a shady ground work to fall back on.

Just warn Lelouch, he told himself, and wash your hands of this entire mess.

Yes, that was what he would do. He waited.

The ringing continued, followed by one fatal – in more ways than one, for Lelouch Lamperouge, if the assassin got to him first – howl of the telephone, indicating he should leave a brief message. In a fit of panic, he wondered how brief, before his addled mind remembered he could always call again, and again. However many calls it takes, he decided.

He went upstairs, and brought out his blood pressure monitor. He checked it, letting the machine pump air into a covering of leather that fit snuggly on his upper arm. It was high. Too high. He wondered if he would have a hypertensive crisis. He hoped not.

Then he wondered if the telephone calls were being recorded by that mysterious voice, that person who left the message. If so, would the person who hired Mr. Grechen have reserves about turning his back on an alliance if it meant saving his own ass?

Robert thought not.

He was using his own cell, but he decided he would need to be more cunning, more sneaky and use a public telephone.

The bus ride toward the mall – where a myriad different stores resided selling dubious quality wares – was uneventful. He thought he saw something suspicious when an old lady kept staring at him, her eyes yellow and skin granuled with old age taking a heavy toll on her health, but realized that she was probably blind. She wore a pink blouse; Robert saved that in his memory bank and linked the bus ride to that image. He marveled at the fact that he could still exercise his near perfect memory in a moment of emergent crisis.

He felt a moment of nostalgia, at the old days when his only worry was skateboarding through the park, reading science textbooks and experimenting in his home made lab (the kitchen).

It faded when the bus slowed to a stop. He got out with the other passengers, their bags and chatter fading into the background as he focused on his search for a public telephone. He found in the far corner of the mall after several long minutes of walking fast enough to eat up the ground. As he dug into his pocket for change, finding nothing, he realized he forgot his wallet.

"Oh fuck!" he moaned.

"Excuse me, young man?" said the old woman in the pink blouse, who was only a few meters beside him.

Robert started toward her in surprise, "Um… I said oh shuck, it's the name of a hit song I'm looking for," he lied.

"Well if you want a two bit thong – heavens know what for – I suggest you try the woman's clothing stores upstairs."

"I said a hit song!"

"Yes, I heard you say a two bit thong, no need to repeat yourself," said the old lady, snorting in contempt, "Young people these days, need some proper educamation they do."

Robert asked, "Listen, ma'am, do you have a quarter?"

"No sir, I am not a porter," the old lady said indignantly, whacking Robert on the arm with her purse, "If you want someone to carry your suitcase you will have to ask security."

Then she proceeded to yell for security, much to Robert's consternation.

A fat black security guard dressed in a tight uniform with a very garish yellow tie that exactly matched the yellow blodges in the old woman's eye waddled toward them, one hand brushing a heavy black stick slinged on his waist. "Excuse me, ma'am, is this man bothering you?"

"Why yes he is, thank you," said the old lady, "Can you believe he wants me to carry his suitcases?"

"Is that so," said the security guard, glaring at Robert. "I think we need to escort you out," he exclaimed, "Come with me!"

He grabbed Robert's arm in a tight unyielding grip. Robert tried to explain he just needed to make a phone call but to no avail.

When he was thrown out of the mall, he pulled out his cell phone and decided to hell with the man who had left the message on his telephone. He probably already knew Robert and Lelouch were friends so it didn't matter too much anyways.

Ring. Ring.

No answer.

"Fuck!" Robert exclaimed angrily, and slammed his phone on the road, whereupon a car approached and crushed it beneath big black rubber tires.

AN: Hey guys, sorry for the long wait. Tell me what you think of this (shorter) chapter. Review please!


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